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I have been a customer of Oxford Health Insurance since 2001; yes for you math geniuses that's 15 years. I first got Oxford Health Insurance when I joined what was then known as DLJdirect and kept it - I even used COBRA to keep it when the company formerly known as DLJdirect was purchased by e*Trade. I remember sitting in a conference room with my fellow employees going over e*Trade's benefits and I was the only person that raised their hand when I asked about using COBRA to keep Oxford Health Insurance. Why did I do that? Well, because my wife Mary had breast cancer and the moment I switched over to e*Trade's health coverage, I'd be looking at thousands of dollars in deductibles almost immediately, so I kept Oxford. In fact, I added Oxford as my LLC's health coverage and throughout Mary's battle with breast cancer, I never paid anything more than co-pays. That's 10.5 years worth of cancer bills. After Mary passed away, my small business plan was no longer allowed so I went with Oxford's platinum health coverage. That includes when they were purchased by that awful company, UnitedHealthcare.

So, let's now skip to Obamacare and in full disclosure, as part of my work with political advertising, I've run tons of ads online against Obamacare. I know a lot about Obamacare. Yes - we all know by now that if you liked your healthcare plan, you definitely never kept it through the implementation of Obamacare. However, it didn't bother me too much except for that part of being deceived in the marketing of Obamacare to the public. Yes - I get the good things about Obamacare; your kids can stay on your plans longer, there is marketplace for plans, and you can't be denied coverage for preexisting conditions. However, rates have gone up, coverage has gone down, and deductibles kept going up. That awful company UnitedHealthcare kept tinkering with the Oxford plans and up until recently they were still good; that is until this year when they sunk the Oxford brand and are trying to force migrate customers to UnitedHealthcare plans that truly suck.

At the beginning of October I got an unmarked white envelope that I happen to open up out of mere curiosity. To my utter disappointment, it was a giant get lost letter. It's the kind of mailing that a marketing team is forced to mail out in the hopes that their customers throw it out and NEVER read it. It's the kind of letter that a marketing team and their legal team puts their minds together to figure out how to make sure the vast majority of customer don't read it so the marketing team meets their retention goals for the year. It's the kind of letter that you get when you raise rates but don't want your customer to see while you blast these misleading ads that make you think that UnitedHealthcare isn't a company that's going to screw you over when in fact they are. The rest of the letter was plain paper with black lettering without even the blue typeface of UniteHealthcare's logo. It's just a plain screw off letter.

Page 1 (shown here) was definitely the start of the goodbye but their lawyers wrote it as an negative opt out which means IF YOU DO NOTHING THEY AUTOMATICALLY ENROLL YOU IN A CRAPPIER PLAN. That's totally unfair and definitely a deal cut between the marketing, legal, and product teams to get people off of a legacy plan and force migrated over to a worse plan. They even confuse people by giving you two dates you must be enrolled in - December 15 to take action and then December 31 if you want coverage with a new plan to start on January 1. Again, written by a lawyer with input from marketing so to increase the chance of confusion.

Next up, this plan, if I somehow lost my mind and agreed to it, costs me $200 more per month and as you will see in a few lines, for far worse coverage. It also neatly comes in $3.74 below $1,600 - again probably a negotiated number to make it appear not as sucky as it really is. The minimum $1,600 per month translates into $19K in cash per year from me which makes this letter even a larger screw you by the UnitedHealthcare vultures. That's like 20x larger than a car payment - do you think you'd get a giant white ugly marketing piece from a car company when they try and get you to spend less than that per month? Oh that cost includes the lovely processing of having to choose a PCP to get referrals (I technically know that's a bit whiny but this is about being charged more for less)

Next up is page 2 of the letter which is conveniently printed double sided - probably not to save money but in the hopes that the customer doesn't read the second page. It has two lousy giant screw you points: 1) if you don't like your plan they suggest you go to the healthcare marketplace and find a new one AND 2) an 800# to call if you have questions.

First I called the 800#. Guess what - they couldn't help me and transferred me. So, the next transfer number couldn't help me either so I picked up my insurance card and called the number on the back. That number explained to me that Oxford wasn't being offered in NJ and that UnitedHealthcare would handle my insurance but they werent prepared to take calls until open enrollment on November 1; that's right - the lousy marketing geniuses at this vulture of an insurance company, UnitedHealthcare, sent out a letter 30 days before they had phone support - that's another screw you. Oh and how about sending people to the marketplace to review competitive plans. This is terrible terrible customer service and further proof UnitedHealthcare doesn't want your NJ business.

There are more lousy pages but the real kick in the NJ family jewels comes from this last page which shows my changes from the old plan to the new plan: deductibles going from $0 to $2,250, no co-insurance to 20%, increases of opt of pocket expenses and then additional increases across the board. I don't believe there was a single item that improved. Not one. Just more money per month for worse coverage.

After 15 years, I expected more but UnitedHealthcare doesn't care. You see all of those funny commercials which they are plowing big money into, but at the end of the day, they are not interested in being your healthcare provider. UnitedHealthcare hopes that you don't notice the auto enrollment into a more expensive plan for worse coverage. Oh and when you have any questions about the screw you letter you just received, there isn't anyone there to answer your questions - so your only option is to go to the Obamacare marketplace but that's not available until November 1. So you are stuck with piles of fire starter until then because if you forget about this letter, they will auto enroll you into a worse plan.

The UnitedHealthcare vultures don't want your business - they don't want to help your health, all they are really interested in is making a buck. True marketing vultures - do not use them. Avoid UnitedHealthcare in your open enrollment and pay attention to who you vote for in future elections - it's past time to fix what's going on in Obamacare.

Since the start of this political season, the rage among a lot of online political advertisers is buying online ads using matched voter file (that's taking the an email file and matching them with a publisher). Nearly every ad buy I put together usually ends up with a discussion whether I want to use voter file matched cookies which I answer with umm no. Why would I want to use that garbage? Their answer is, well, the CPMs are only 20% higher plus you know that you are targeting known Republicans, plus everyone else is doing it. I don't buy that everyone is doing it, but...

My answer is still no. Waste of money. Waste of time, plus SURPRISE I have more experience with political online ad buying, especially voter file marketing. It's nothing new.

Now before I continue my bash let me explain that I have nothing against companies that supply the data to match, nor do I have any issue with Facebook's new marketing (I'm bullish on that). I do think there is demand from newer political online marketers who only want to target known Republicans because that's how they've been doing it in direct mail since 1975. Anyway, here's why it is foolish.

I started doing political advertising back in 2006. Back then, we supplied AOL and Yahoo with Republican voter files. I never successfully completed a match with MSN because they were too slow and required too much of either an upfront fee OR a large guaranteed ad buy. We used voter file marketing for McCain's Presidential run.

The CPMs were higher and the results, well, let's just say that the results were not 20% better. In fact, I got better results with running Google Display Ads fired off via keywords than any data file match. So, it was a waste of money and certainly my time when I'd rather focus on content where my ads appeared. Of course by 2012 with so many new targeting networks people have forgotten what worked or didn't work in the past. So, if I don't like voter file marketing, what do I like doing:

ERIC'S FAVORITE 1:1 MARKETING TECHNIQUES IN 2012

Build your own retargeting audience in Google or AdRoll. Yes build your own. People that click on your ads, visit your website, donate, etc. You know what? Other than the money it costs to run ads, it's free to build your audience.

Build your own voter file targeting in FB. Load up your own email list to FB and let FB anonymously match your files and build an audience for you. Why is this better than the big voter file match? It's YOUR OWN LIST and it's free.

Email marketing (yeah that still works real well)

Google Search - why? These are people looking for your message or YOU.

Content Targeting - match your choice keywords with content so your ads appear when the content makes sense. You know why that works? Because it is cost effective.

Facebook interest targeting - it's the best out there and cheap.

A pure voter file marketing campaign is the last thing I'd buy. If I had branding dollars, I'd move to partners like Twitter, Pandora, Hulu, and YouTube before I'd spend a dime on a pure voter file buy.

Is voter file marketing all the rage? I don't care and neither should you.

I don't get it. Your Facebook advertising is awful. It's almost like you are 18 years old and just started reading a marketing 101 book. Or worse yet. You are robbing your clients blind with high agency fees.

Yes, Google Advertising is hard. It requires logical campaign design, optimization, and an understanding of search. Perhaps you've given up with Google or your clients figured out you don't know anything.

Facebook isn't hard. It's actually very intuitive and very easy to use. Yes you can setup multiple campaigns and multiple ads. You can use some bid management help, but at the end of the day, the platform is easy to microtarget people based on interest and demographics. So there's no reason for the following lousy political ads....

Elizabeth Warren (Democrat for Senate from Massachusetts): I live in NJ. I'm a registered Republican. Probably show up in the conservative bucket. I don't susbcribe to multiple political accounts. I should NOT be in your target.

George Allen (Republican running for Senate in Virginia): The ad targeting was good. I dont like the ad because it gave me the impression that his campaign is on life support...(snicker away)

Obama LGBT: Well the targeting is way off here. Wrong political category (for the most part), wrong Presidential candidate, and it is very easy to add in narrow interest targeting to find people in the LGBT target. However, not to be outdone, The Mitt Romney campaign (sorry) has the worst targeting

Now. I'm not a facebook fan of Mitt Romney. I was following him since 2008 but during the 2012 Primary I didn't want friends thinking I supported him, so I unliked him. Plus, I found the posts not very informative. They then hit me with a lot of ads which of course was the correct target. That was fine but they stopped.

So now, I get served individual ads based on potential microtargets. However, all of these microtargets are so easy to find, its inexcusable to not use them. And, Facebook has matured so that just getting likes is not that compelling + it's not very helpful for your strategy if someone is in multiple micro targets or coalitions.

Romney Hispanic Target: Umm, I don't like Romney and I'm not Hispanic. The Hispanic target is the ONLY broad match target under the Ethnics category. CHECK THE BOX.

Women for Romney: Listen folks, Facebook was founded to help Zuckerberg get a date. Use the gender targeting. Try using something more than just a friend of mine liking the page for your targeting.

Young Americans for Mitt: I'm 45. As young and immature as I like to be, I'm pretty sure 45 is not in the Young American target. Use the age targeting.

So to summarize, I've been served ads meant for women, young voters, Hispanic voters, LGBT, and out of state liberal/progressive ads. I can actually rationalize the Warren + Debbie Wasserman Schulz ads as testing into the active politics broad category but the rest of the lifestyle targeting by President Obama and especially Romney for President are just poor.

I havent seen any more poorly targeted Obama ads but the Romney ads just keep coming. It doesn't make any sense. If you really want to build up facebook coalitions, why not try to put the correct demos in your coalition. Sure maybe it costs you a little more money to add the demo, but doesn't that make the most sense to have the purest coalition as possible? It's easy, try it.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. By the way, The Obama Campaign is still serving LGBT ads. It's really a poor display of the lifestyle targeting available in Facebook and demonstrates that The Obama Campaign is not technologically savvy.

P.P.S Oh and not to be outdown by lousy facebook marketing, Romney is now targeting me with Hispanic versions of his ad. Really, hit the ethnic targeting. Its there and available.

*******I wrote this post in 2006, I think.....Wow, I was quite the author back then. I think with Google changing their privacy policy, I think this is an interesting post******

I lot of friends, including my wife, have said to me, "why are you so harsh on Google lately?" This kind of surprises me because I don't think I have been. Sure this is the third article I've written on Google as of late and you are probably wondering if I may dump blospot and pop over to Typepad instead.

Let me set the record straight. I love Google and the products that they bring to the marketplace. I also know a lot of people at Google and they are all great. Google also brings a ton of competition to the marketplace and, it didn't hurt that my former employer was part of the IPO group.

However, they are in it to make money, just like everyone else. Have you seen their stock price recently and their marketcap? It is outrageous. You know what else you need to learn about Google? How about their corporate mantra? Read #4 and #6. #4 is titled Democracy on the web works and #6 is You can make money without doing evil. Interesting huh? Let's see how democracy on the web and making money without doing evil has been forgotten or at least thrown out temporarily when it comes to making money.

Democracy on the webFirst, Google decides not to help the United States Government in understanding how existing filtering on the web protects children from porn and predators. It IS a primary part of a ruling on the COPA act. Now, they are the only ones from the Big 4 that stood up to the Government. Some people think that Google is standing up to the US to protect individual freedom and who knows, first this data and then they hand over PII information on individual's searches.

Last time I checked, the US Government, the best Democracy on the great blue spot in the Milky Way protects our individual rights and not Google. And, you know who basically asked for the check on the existing filtering technology - The Supreme Court. Now lets look at the other side of the spectrum - China.

China and Google - Perfect Together?

China - the last time I checked was Communist. You remember those people, right? They were pretty popular up until 1989 or so, when Reagan's pressures finally led to the crumbling of the Soviet Empire and only really left Cuba and China as strong Communist nations.

Fast forward to 2006 and everyone loves China now a days because you guessed it - a billion or so people buy a lot of goods; that is when their government allows them to make some money. You know what the Chinese still practice - good old government censorship.

Freedom of speech in China, the kind like we enjoy in the USA, does NOT exits. Hell, you can't even get a good search result without some form of censorship.

Now, Google decides to help the Chinese Government continue to oppress their people by making it easier to censor search results. No, not the Google. we can make money without doing evil company. Yes that Google; well maybe not the Google that originally wrote those words, but the Google that is now making a ton of money. Read this article from CNN entitled Google to Censor Itself.

I don't know about you, but when the same company decides to stiff the Democratic US Government in the name of freedom and then turns around and helps a Communist China continue their oppression, one has to wonder who we are dealing with. Maybe Google should re-read their Corporate Values Statement again and decide if they really want to make some money the free speech, democratic way which up until now has helped their stock grow from about $90 to $433.

Think I'm the only one that feels this way - check out Bambi's article over at CBS MarketWatch (require free registration) titled Google Shows Its True Colors . Again, makes you want to move your blog to Typepad.

A lot of political amateurs put weight into Google's ability to predict outcomes in elections based on search trends. Personally, I've always used Google's search traffic as a trailing indicator of strength and of course as a way to capitalize on the traffic for marketing. Whether it is straight paid search, YouTube, or display ads in Google's display network a sudden increase in traffic offers opportunities to either defend your positions or increase membership/donations. So let's take a peek at the last 90 days in Google Search for a few of Republican presidential candidates plus one more.

So what do I see?

You can see the double spike for Michele and Rick Perry on August 13. Obviously that was the Iowa Straw Poll win for Michele and then Perry's announcement. Both of those were tremendous fundraising opportunities

Perry's traffic really takes a steep slide after the announcement but in the past 90 days he has the most amount of search traffic (you can see the strength by the color coded bars). I don't know what their online advertising activities are, but from what I've seen it's zero.

There were two Perry spikes around the early and mid September debates. Those were around the debate attacks he was getting around his HPV executive order and other points brought up concerning his conservative track record. Those were defensive, rapid response activities (that links to an old post on how to use search for rapid response) that were missed or fundraising opportunities for other candidates (see this clickz article).

At the end of September there are two very interesting spikes. The first one is around Herman Cain and this should represent fundraising opportunities for him but like Perry, I haven't seen any online advertising since the Iowa Straw Poll. To put the Cain spike in perspective the height looks a lot like the height for Perry's announcement, Michele's Straw Poll Victory, or Michele's announcement back in June (not shown on this chart). Cain should be getting a lot of donations now and names of people interested in joining his campaign - however, like a lot of these sudden spikes, he needs to capitalize on the short term opportunities.

The other spike is the Chris Christie spike, which until this week the search traffic was pretty vanilla. I personally don't believe my Governor is running for President in 2012 but that spike at least represents huge interest or the pressure he is under. If they had a PAC advertising around his name this would represent a great opportunity to fundraise or gather names of potential supporters.

Google search traffic is a trailing indicator of events that have occurred or are occurring in real time. It represents good marketing opportunities if you know how to capitalize it. Oh one final Chris Christie note, if his search traffic spikes to the August 13 traffic spike, you can pretty much be guaranteed that he opted to run for President.

On a YouTube Politics panel I was on, I was asked by the moderator, Google Account Executive Robert Saliterman, if I had any advice for President Obama's ad campaign. I did and it turned out to be a little controversial. I do admit that I was trying to add a little pizazz towards the end of the panel, but I really do believe my arguments are sound.

Basically, I think that the President of the United States should not be running a site called "Attack Watch" where someone can go to report an attack, track "false" reports and facts, and read all sorts of Obama propaganda. It was wrong when President Nixon had a list and it is wrong when President Obama makes a list (unless you are one of the media agencies, then it can be helpful 'Natch).

When challenged by my panelists during the panel and afterwards, I do believe that the President should not be running a site like this, especially with the data collection capabilities available in 2012. Basically if you report someone or sign up for emails, President Obama can do the following with your data - personally identifiable and non PII data linked together.

When you visit Attack Watch take a look all the way at the bottom for the Privacy Policy Link. Then take a read through it. If you don't have the time, here are the low-lights that prove my point, that the President should not have this data available to him....BTW - in case they change the policy, I copied and pasted these links on September 17, 2011 so they were LIVE when Attack Watch was launched.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT: Such information may include personal information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and credit card information. Personal and demographic information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with creating a profile or group, leaving comments, posting blog comments or other content, sending an email or message to another user, or participating in any interactive forums or features on the Sites. In addition, from time to time we may collect demographic, contact or other personal information you provide in connection with your participation in surveys, contests, games, promotions, and other activities on the Sites.

In addition, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may require us to collect personal information from donors. For example, the FEC requires us to collect (and disclose) the name, mailing address, occupation, and employer of all individuals whose donations exceed $200 per calendar year.

Passive Collection: When you use the Sites, some information is also automatically collected, such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your operating system, the browser type, the address of a referring web site, and your activity on our Sites. We treat this information as personal information if we combine it with or link it to any of the identifying information mentioned above.

In some cases, third party vendors may collect personal information from you, such as your name and email address, on other web sites and provide this information to us, or OFA may collect personal information that you enter directly within an advertising unit.

We may share personal information as follows: with vendors, consultants, and other service providers or volunteers who are engaged by or working with us and who need access to such information to carry out their work for us; with candidates, organizations, groups or causes that we believe have similar political viewpoints, principles or objectives;

Basically, what does this mean? Simple. President Obama can:

collect your web surfing behaviors on and off their sites

combine it with personal information like credit card, employment, phone number

use the combined data for anything it wants

and then provide that information to anyone it wants - that information can include the information you reported on a friend or neighbor

Do you really think the President of the USA should have this information? Do you really think the President of the USA should have a site to report neighbor and then combine this information? I don't. I might not be so scared if they didn't offer up that they could combine the PII with non-PII data, but they can according to their privacy policy.

I think it is one thing for a candidate to collect this type of marketing information. However, it is not appropriate when your Government does.

Today, I got an email from Townhall.com that showcased the video interviews they conducted at CPAC last week. Ignore the fact that I've tried unsubscribing multiple times (more on that later) from their emails over the years, so I clicked on an interview with Michele Bachmann which directed me to a YouTube video that was listed as private (more on that soon). Towards the end of the interview, I hear that Ms. Bachmann occasionally blogs at a section of Townhall called tipsheet.

And that's when I got abused by online ads. Giant belly fat ads. Expanding ads. Popups that followed me up and down the page. So bad that I couldn't spend any time trying to read any articles. I mean look at this...Does anyone there care about content on the site?

So I went back to the site just a few minutes ago and the home page is just as bad especially with the home page takeovers and multiple ad placements. Look for yourself

I buy a ton, if not the most, political ads on the Republican side. Townhall should be a key component but it can't be anymore. These ads are a Chief Revenue Officer's or Sales Executive's ad revenue maximization plans gone bad. Seriously, do they even realize that people need to read content in order to monetize it.

That also goes to the email sales mentality of not being able to unsubscribe (and I'm not the only one). Throw in the YouTube private link which makes it impossible to find in YT search results (thinking the clicks are coming from emails only) and you get the idea of a desperate site looking to squeeze every dollar out of the site before it folds up.

You can't buy direct on this site anymore if you care about your brand. I'm not even sure it is worth sneaking it in on an ad network buy because think of how bad the ad position would be. I used to feel that way about Drudge and even with Drudge's auto refresh, it still gives great placements.

Townhall? Right now that's where good online ads go to die. I hope someone at Townhall fixes their ad model because it used to be a good site.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. - Even though we don't work on Sarah Palin anymore, I'd recommend pulling those book ad creatives from the site or talking to the publisher about pulling the ads if you have any care in your brand.

The shooting in Arizona over the weekend of Rep. Giffords was extremely upsetting to me. No I wasn't working in that race, but anytime something horrific occurs it makes me stop and ask questions.

Anyway, a lot of friends and family have asked me about the current state of political discussions and in fact, back in the summer, my Temple had a session on political conversations. You see, one of the great aspects of being Jewish is that you are brought up to ask questions and even challenge facts; try reading the Talmud with your or with a Rabbi and watch how people argue over time and distance about when is day and when is night. So I started thinking, is politics worse now or in the past and why can't we have conversations...

I don't think it is more violent now - when was the last time two leaders dueled over name calling? Burr vs Hamilton?

I do think the TV shows on the right and then left are in it for the money. MSNBC vs Fox - seriously it's about viewers and advertising dollars....

Ever notice that people talk about Olbermann and Rush so much? Why? People listen and they entertain...maybe it is too tough, but they try to get a reaction. Back in the old days when people blogged, the first rule of blogging was to be controversial because that will get you traffic....I wonder where they learned that from?

Personally, I like my news center-right. However, I like hearing both sides. Yes I no longer subscribe to the NY Times but if you send me an article of interest, I will read it. I do watch CNN and listen to it on XM.

In fact, while on XM I do listen to POTUS produced by Pamela Kirkland. I think they do lean center-left but that's ok with me - I want to hear another POV; it helps me do my job better

I've trolled in left and right blogs. Both sides have serious weirdos. You've been hearing about racists in the new political party? Believe that they are only contained to the right? Wrong. Try reading the comments in the DailyKos especially in regards to Senator Lieberman.

Did you laugh when President Bush had a shoe thrown at him? Could he have been hurt? Nothing to compare with what happened in AZ, but how many of you thought that it would have been funny if he got hit...

The murderer at the Arizona shooting is crazy. He doesn't belong to either side. Folks like him are not courted by either side. Trying to frame his shooting as a problem for the Left or Right is wrong. Nobody I've worked for would ever condone such a thing. One thing we can all agree on, is this guy is crazy and what happened in AZ is/was tragic.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I see a lot of media types scrubbing websites and offering to tone down their speech. I hope it lasts longer than just a few token weeks that they think is appropriate.

It's been a while since I posted and I got tired of looking at the same start screen. So here's my review of what worked and didn't work in the 2010 midterms when it came to political online marketing.

WHAT WORKED

Google once again dominates this space. A big or small campaign, Google is your one stop shop for political marketing. If you can't afford to spend a large chunk of campaign cash here, you are still using a marketing playbook from the 1980s

YouTube - yes I get that is Google too but using pre-roll ads in YouTube is a winning strategy and the key to getting some of that traditional advertising bucks. The cost per view was sub a penny and the CTRs were far higher than any banner ads. Plus promoted video is a key to making sure those unflattering related videos don't keep showing up in your search results.

Mobile Advertising - Sure a lot of people didn't think that 2010 was a mobile year, but we proved on several campaigns that the targeting is far superior than desktop and if you time your message correctly you can have a huge impact. How else can you market your message when a large group of people are attending a huge football game?

Facebook for Communication - I became a big believer in boosting Facebook fans for GOTV, messaging, and spreading the word on candidates. Some folks believe it is a good predictor of elections, me? Not so sure but I think the benefits of using them far outweigh any reason to ignore Facebook's predictive power.

Email Marketing - Yes I wrote that. Last cycle I was starting to buy into the "email is dying hype" but that was wrong. Email is anything but dead and in fact, thrived this cycle. That includes a candidate's house file as well as renting external lists. Email works.

Partisan Websites - You know them....Drudge, RedState, HuffPo. They work. You can get petition signups, donations, and other actions - pretty cheaply.

Fox News TV - Nothing like the shot in the arm you get when a candidate is interviewed by Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck. I don't watch Beck unless a candidate of mine is on but when it comes to donations, I get verrrry excited...

WHAT DIDNT WORK

Big Websites - I love building websites and especially love landing pages. However, the way people get news and information today I'm seeing less and less use of the big websites that caters to everyone. Lighter, faster moving, and highly focused pages are the way to go now. Building deep, heavy sites seem to be going extinct. Think Skittles (yes I wrote that)

Any Social Networking Site Not Named Facebook - Did you really use LinkedIn to effectively reach voters? Come on. There is no other advertising game in town. Twitter is good for pushing out or gathering information, but is currently useless for advertising.

Conversions out of Facebook - Yes I became a big fan of Facebook but getting measurable conversions out of FB besides what's available there is still difficult. The only real conversions I've seen were the two times I clicked on ads to pre-order Springsteen's Live in Hyde Park and The Promise.

Low Search Volume - You can't manufacturer search volume - if it is a small search volume candidate than that is the answer.

Spending too much time worrying about big ROIs instead of plowing some of that money into expanding your reach. The ideal ROI should be between 100% and 125%.

A few interesting articles have been released in the past week or so that highlights that the state of online political marketing looks great. Back when I started in political marketing almost 5 years ago, the rage was blogging, Meet-up, Google Bombs, and video broadcasts. While these are all fine and dandy, now I see the more sophisticated campaigns using mobile marketing, behavioral targeting, email marketing, video ads, search marketing, and lots of banner ads. Also, 5 years ago the campaign manager was often someone we rarely spoke with and now campaign managers are very involved in online advertising. Here are a few recent articles...

Two articles highlighting Michele Bachmann's innovative online marketing campaign, one in TwinCities.com (Pioneer Press) and the other in the Star Tribune.

Political marketers get feisty with the lack of advertising opportunities available in Twitter - first covered in ClickZ and then picked up by Fast Company.

Of course the "older" article from ClickZ on political marketing using mobile surges

You probably noticed that I didn't link to any search marketing or display ads but other than a few campaigns, I've noticed plenty of ads buys and complex paid search campaigns and even some smart Facebook campaigns. Regarding the Twitter article, I guess what got me so feisty is that some of the largest Twitter accounts are political yet, there are no viable advertising solutions for us.

While 2008 was definitely when online advertising was placed on the map, people still focused on organic tools like Facebook pages, YouTube channels, MySpace (what a mistake), engaging bloggers, etc. 2010 will be the birth of mobile advertising (not the crappy tactic of sending vote to #12346) and 2012 will be when you do see the tipping point crash through that 10% spend ceiling. Why? All of these smart congressional campaigns will be 2 years wiser, the 2012 Presidential campaign will be fought on the web and not over the air (unless mobile), more of the population will be using electronic devices, paper newspapers should be in a walker, and the campaign managers will move from "what's my website strategy" to "what's my integrated advertising strategy."

OK if you are even a casual observer of politics than you know by now that Christine O'Donnell's long shot bid to take out popular politician Mike Castle for the GOP nomination of Delaware's Senate seat, worked much to the chagrin of party insiders. Now, I didn't have a dog in this fight but for a variety of reasons (some of them personal) I was cheering for her all along. I am still not working on this race and don't expect to, but if I was, here's the advice I'd be giving the campaign right now.

GO 100% DIGITAL ADVERTISING UNTIL 2 WEEKS OUT

Here's why....

Right now according to what I've read in the press, she is going to have a tough time getting help from the NRSC and perhaps even the DE GOP. Of course this could just be a echo from the Primary campaign that's she's unelectable, but in reality, the campaign won't get much support until she closes the gap in polling.

It appeared that she didn't have much money and whatever she did have was spent getting her people out to vote. These first two points rules out TV for now.

A quick peek over in Google's Ad Planner tool shows that there are 560K 18+ people online in Delaware. In one month they generate 2B pageviews with Facebook, Yahoo, and YouTube as the top 3 visited sites. These kinds of numbers are definitely in reach of an expensive, advertising campaign, yet one within the realm of possibility.

You can make TV ads very cost effectively. It is the media that costs a lot of money, but if you can hire a good agency, you can stream those ads online VERY cost effectively.

SO WHAT DIGITAL TACTICS WOULD I RECOMMEND?

Raise money NATIONALLY and build your brand locally in Delaware. Yes you can do that quite easily and we do it all the time.

Stream your TV ads online in Google's advertising network and also YouTube. Not the free stuff, but PAID advertising.

Overlay your vote goals with districts, zipcodes, etc and focus your money in the best areas. Even if you want to target all of Delaware, your can run a Google Surge for about $7K per day which is very inexpensive for your TV commercials. Even if that's too rich, you can run something at a 50% share for $3500 per day.

Stop with the minor league search campaigns that you are running right now. When I searched today, I saw some real amateurishness ads running including one still mentioning Mike Castle and that's when an ad rotated in. Those text ads are your life blood to raising money online in and out of the state. And, if you aren't tracking back exactly to which ads/keywords are raising money, you need to switch vendors.

You did great online with your grassroots efforts and bloggers, but guess what you needs all of those folks working in those credit card companies in Wilmington to get you elected and they aren't reading those blogs anymore and may not have time on Facebook. Its time to venture out beyond Facebook and email chains and reach them online with your message.

Once you raise enough money online you can then bankroll dollars for your TV media buy the last two weeks of the campaign. Hopefully by then, you've closed the gap and other entities also start to spending money on TV which they definitely will.

Only by running a truly insurgent campaign online can you win this race. Only by raising money nationally and branding locally can you win. By focusing online now while waiting for the right time to launch TV can you cost effectively run this race. Good luck.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I couldn't go into real detailed tactics but the above is a start.

So, we launched a new great political advertising tactic called a Google Mobile Surge and surprisingly when compared to its older brother a Google Surge, the Mobile Surge over delivered on my expectations. Now unlike my original post on a Google Surge, its a little too early to give away how to tips, but I thought it would great to give you a little background on how we came up with this political tactic....

A few months ago, my co-worker Ryan and I had a call with Apple to learn about their iAd platform and even though we have several clients that have enough budget to extend their advertising to mobile, Apple told us that unless we agreed to spend high 6 to 7 figures in a month they wouldn't give us even a presentation on the capabilities. (yes - Apple refused to hit the damn <send> button on an email. Dear Apple, I love your devices but your sales force is seriously short sighted)

In the meantime, I kept researching Google's capabilities in the mobile space and I worked on several projects for other clients; what I learned was that Google has $150K+ per day in App advertising and I've noticed that you can expect 10% of your search volume to be available on mobile phones.

Now, if you hadn't noticed, Google automatically opts your campaigns into All Devices; now this seems harmless enough because unless you make a WAP ad your ads will only show on high end devices which is a decent way to extend your reach (I monitor the results and if not meeting client goals I will opt out of mobile).

Next up came the Michele Bachmann Campaign which as a consultant I love working on. They came to us with a strategy of promoting their new Jim The Election Guy video which hammered her opponent for taxing beer and reminded people at the glorious Minnesota State Fair.

Coming up with a desktop surge was easy. Promoting the commercial to Minnesota fair ground people while they are waiting in line for the State Fair food was genius. As I said in the article, imagine standing in line for your beer and you pull out your iPhone to have this ad delivered into the palm of your hand. Pure evil genius...

And we way over delivered on YouTube views for the ad and without giving away metrics, the CTRs were FANTASTIC and the CPCs were outrageously competitive for something that was worth far more than the CPM bids.

Yes I wrote CPMs bids - contrary to popular belief you can sometimes get cheap CPCs and great reach for a CPM bid.

Finally, in politics, I think the volume right now is in the Apps and not in the mobile search; that's not to say you should ignore mobile search, just expect better reach on the App side for now

The campaign is happy. We are thrilled and we are generating some buzz. Remember, like its older brother, the Mobile Surge is not for the small budgeted advertiser..Oh and those iAds? I'll wait for Apple's sales call when they figure out that they missed out on advertising dollars from all the small/medium advertisers - especially political ad dollars this season.

So I spent some time this morning diving into the McCain - Hayworth primary race and of course visited both sites. After visiting Hayworth's site I got sidetracked by a link to an article in my local newspaper on the Daily Record. What did I see on the right hand side? This ad (most likely served via Google) from the Hayworth campaign bragging that they were within 5 points. Hmmm, that seemed odd to me considering that Rasmussen released a new poll today showing McCain up by 12 and over the 50% mark.

Anyway I clicked on the ad and was taken to a donation landing page that mentions absolutely nothing about where that poll number came from. In fact, the only talking point was about amnesty.

Now I like attack ads - in fact, I take a lot personal pride in running them in Google. Some of our most famous ones were for Romney, Biden, and of course Obama. However, one thing we don't do is send clicks into a page that didn't back up what we were promoting. Even our famous "What Does Joe Biden have to say on Obama" ad campaign went right to a video backing up the claim.

What I don't like about this ad is that it doesn't link to the proof to back up the 5 points and when I cruised their site I could find nothing backing up the claim. I did find the poll numbers in and older Rasmussen poll so if they are using Rasmussen, it's time to change out that ad because a new poll is out and the 5 points isn't correct.

So, I continued to dig in and decided to look around in Google Trends. And just like my last post, Hayworth occasionally makes some noise but Insight for Search (Arizona) and Google Trends (USA) shows that Hayworth still has a long way to go to generate buzz. Plus, if you were to take the latest Rasmussen poll with the Google Search data, that momentum bragged about in the Hayworth ad might have been short lived.

A taxing development surfaced on Wednesday.
White House economic advisor Paul Volcker is calling for a new national sales tax -- a value added tax or "vat" -- to help close the deficit.
But as CBS 2 HD found out area residents are saying "vat chance."

PardonMyFrench - President Obama won't stop taxing us until we are all poor except for the really super rich. To everyone who voted for Obama, thanks for wrecking this country. BTW - MIDDLE CLASS TAX INCREASE. MIDDLE CLASS TAX INCREASE

Sorry about the slow postings as of late. I've been in personal overload as of late and just can't make the time to post. Anyway, I was cruising through Twitter last night and I noticed some folks pimping the JD Hayworth money bomb against Senator McCain. So I decided to poke around on Google Trends to see what I could find.

Nothing surprising here with McCain holding a large lead in search trends, but I wanted to dig further because I believe there had to be more going on with potential social networking links. BTW - the data was limited to Arizona but really didn't change much if you looked at USA. Also, notice the huge spike when Palin campaigned for McCain.

OK now this more interesting and if you are cheering for McCain this looks a little worrisome. First, McCain still holds a big lead but with the more recent data you can see the Palin Spike has come and gone and those lines look like they could cross. Second, when you look at the regional data (not shown on my blog) you see that Hayworth has nothing going on in the rest of the US but does have some significant interest in Arizona which....is the critical state - not as much as McCain but still significant. Finally, when you compare the search traffic growth relative to the news and current events category you'll see Hayworth is on the rise but has done that in the past.

So what does the data tell me besides the obvious which is that this is a competitive race? Hayworth still has a long way to go and when there is significant news or activity he sees spike in online activity. However, money bombs, retweets, links, and other social networking activities in favor of him don't seem to have a lasting effect; that is a lasting effect yet.

Scott Brown's Senate victory in very blue Massachusetts is a referendum on the very liberal policies of President Obama. To spin it any other way is just plain old BS.

Obama, Axelrod, Pelosi, and Schumer can try and rewrite this victory but the plain truth is that independents have woken up a regretted their vote for Obama as well as the 10% in moronic Republicans who voted for Obama in 2008.

Yes they were dissatisfied with President Bush, but clearly any of that great hope and change feeling generated by candidate Obama has long since disappeared. Trying to cram 2000 page health care reform and the unStimulus package doesn't work and the people don't view that as hope and change.

People have woken up and realized this wasn't what they voted for in November 2008 and they have buyer's remorse. I always personally felt that the Gubernatorial victories were NOT referendums on Obama and DID NOT prove a Republican comeback, especially in NJ. Corzine was well hated in this state and was doomed from the start but it really was a referendum on Corzine and not Obama.

However, Brown's victory IS a referendum on Obama, This is a state that other than Vermont is probably the bluest state in the USA and to lose this Senate seat and cause Obama to either a) move towards the center to get his crown jewel policies passed or b) to move further to the left and ram things through Congress with behind the door policy maneuvers. These are anything but a different Washington.

It is morning again America. Massachusetts lost a Senate seat to a Republican about 1 year after Obama's election. There is no other spin. The country does not like the direction that the liberal left led by Obama is taking us in and has spoken loud and clear. The midterms should be interesting as is Obama's spin on this election tomorrow morning.

I read this article today over at Politico called President Obama's Political Arm Under Fire and all I kept thinking well that's the difference between Campaigner Barack Obama and President Barack Obama. Now before all you Obama fanboys jump all over me, this isn't meant to be a political attack.

I've spent a ton of time studying what my opponents did during the Presidential campaign. I can tell you what worked for them as well what worked for us. I spent some time after the election at Harvard with a unique group of professionals, students, and professors analyzing what happened during the campaign; plus, you can read my notes from David Plouffe's book. Anyway, besides turning out to be a fundraising dynamo, Obama ultimately left his mark in campaigning history with his grass roots online organizing which was spearheaded by his message of hope and change.

Anyway, back to the article. It is a reasonably fair analysis of the problems Organizing for America has been having and will continue to have into the near future. OFA is really the management of Candidate Obama's email list post his election. This list was supposed to be key to helping President Obama push his agenda through to the millions and millions of supporters, except, as the article points out, OFA is nowhere near as effective for the President's agenda. Hmm, I wonder what happened?

When people joined the campaign they were enthralled by Candidate Obama's message and charisma. They also got swept up by their community and saw and felt the online organizing. And, through the online networking they felt connected to Candidate Obama. Now, OFA is just an email list disconnected from the Presidency and the website looks and feels like what it is, a political tool.

Notice the giant box on the right for the special election in Mass? Candidate Obama might support the Democrat in a race, but would be more subtle about why and certainly would not allow to be perceived as a typical liberal Democrat blindly supporting the Democrat in the race. OFA, no problem (BTW - if you are a Republican please help out Scott Brown).

Heck, maybe it is the overt political messages that has turned people off. Maybe people like me if they want to connect with President Obama signed up for emails from the White House, RSS feeds from their blog posts, as well as updates via Facebook. As proof the traffic on barackobama.com has plummeted and is probably around 2007 levels or less according to Alexa.

Really, if you joined OFA you joined to be a part of something. That was Candidate Obama and if you want to connect with Candidate Obama, you can easily do that through the President's contact tools. If you want political directions, there are tons of groups out there to organize you. If you want to support President Obama's goals, you don't need OFA to help you, you can just get information directly from The White House. OFA definitely isn't continuing that Hope and Change message; to me, it looks like the type of politics that Candidate Obama campaigned against. Basically, it appears until Obama's reelection campaign, OFA won't be as useful as it once was.

Sorry about the lack of posts but between the Jewish Holiday, travelling to DC, and just getting hammered with work, I haven't been able to stay up to date. Anyway, I love the far left screaming at President Obama for two huge issues - The War in Afghanistan and Health Care Reform. Why? Pretty simple actually. Obama won a lot of fickle grips to get elected President. Using stats from the book How Barack Obama Won:

44% of the country is considered moderate and Obama won 60% of them

33% of the country is considered conservative and Obama won a shocking 20% of them

18% of the country was aged between 18-29 and Obama won 66% of them

11% of the country was a new voter and Obama won 69% of them

Historically, new voters stick with their initial vote but (just a hunch), the 2008 election was so engaging and so new media focused, that I believe we reached a turning point and you can't assume old models. The youth voters can be very fickle and either stay home because the movement isn't what they thought it was or their information sources now start writing differently. The youth is digitally connected and use Facebook, Google, Blogs, and mobile, so what do you think they'll see when the Left's Digital Warlords start attacking the anointed one?

Those moderates (if you are one, don't take offense) don't have solid digital political homes. What kind of information do you think they'll find online now? Conservatives who won't give Obama any advantage and the Left hammering him on the Afghanistan War and Health Care.

First on Afghanistan. I think Obama did the right thing by boosting troop levels. As Obama said on the campaign trail, the war there is urgent and he believed we took our eye off of it in favor of Iraq. He campaigned on it, gave great speeches and debate answers but now fortunately for the GOP, he is tied directly to the war there. This drives the Left crazy because they supported President Obama under the assumption that he was anti-war (really anti-Iraq war); he telegraphed his desires in the War, but I guess Code Pink and the rest of them ignored it as an empty campaign promise. Now his favorite puppy in Congress Nancy Pelosi says that Obama will have to rally the votes in the House without her help.

Now onto the Health Care debate in the Senate. You probably already know that the Public Option is dead in the Senate and that includes the lowering of the age qualification for Medicare. So this sends the super Loony Left led by Keith Olbermann into a fit because the only way to get a Health Care reform bill passed in the Senate is to do what these nutjobs like Olbermann don't want which is meaningful reform without a Public Option. Olbermouth joins Governor Dean (not someone I agree with, but someone I respect), Daily Kos founder, and Huffington Post (another person I usually dont agree with but respect) as a chorus of Left Leaders who want the current bill killed. Even President Obama's own Obama For America email list is having big trouble with the public option going away. Why? Because they aren't getting what they want, and they believed that Obama the Campaigner was in favor of a Single Payer Option.

When your supporters turn on you on major policy moves in this Digital World, it leaves a nice digital footprint for eternity. Even Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe knows that this in-fighting isn't good because he knows that Obama is losing support from the middle (already lost it for those crazy conservatives that voted for him) and if he can't rely on the Loony Left from increasing support and pushing out content, Obama has problems. The more pragmatic moves that President Obama makes that piss of the Left, is good news for moderates who regret their vote and Republicans.

I finished David Plouffe's book a few days ago and whether you think it was due to some left over bitterness of McCain's campaign or not, the book really fades at the end. As opposed to the Primary Season, Plouffe seems to rush through the last 70 pages of the book and becomes quite cynical.

The biggest take aways I have from those last 70 pages are that Obama raised a TON of cash and this allowed his campaign to put states into play that Democrats would historically avoid and Obama's Digital Team of 90 people led by Joe Rospars continued to work their magic in email, attack videos (Keating 7), and online grassroots organizing. So this really started me to ask myself, how much of the win was due to Obama as a candidate and Rospars as an internet guru and less about your every day tactics of running a campaign? Anyway.....

Plouffe talks about how important Sarah Palin's nomination was for fund raising and volunteering for Obama. However, as I wrote a while back, Palin was very important to McCain's campaign when it came to energizing the conservative base and delivering donations. No matter what you think, Palin was not one of the top 3 reasons McCain lost to Obama.

Plouffe talked about McCain ignoring Virginia until the last minute and quite frankly I think he hammers the campaign too much. Did we lose VA? Yes. However, we were outgunned when it came to money and enthusiasm, so I'm sure (I wasn't part of any discussion, but I did hear some things) the executive staff thought that if we lost Virginia, we likely lost the election anyway.

Page 326 is the most eye opening page in the entire book. This is where Plouffe recounts raising $150 million in September; they added 2.3 million supporters bringing their digital contact list to 11 million (in September) and he recounts how their internet advertising brought in several dollars almost immediately (I talked about McCain raising $4 for every $1 spent, but for most months it was higher than that in search). They raised a whopping $100 million online. Plouffe then writes this line which sums up 2 out of the top 4 reasons McCain lost "Almost all campaigns never have enough money or people to do what they'd like....Not this campaign. It's like fantasy camp for political operatives."

And that's pretty much how the campaign ended for McCain. With money pouring in Obama could advertise (and advertise a lot) wherever he wanted, opening up states that Democrats historically ignored. Coupled with Rospars online grassroots organizing, online advertising, and use of YouTube and Facebook, Obama was able to expand the field by putting tools at people's disposal that make it easy for volunteers to organize.

The last top 2 reasons we lost occurs around September 15 which was the economy blowing up. This was our final nail in the coffin as no Republican could be competitive with President Bush's approval rating and the economy going south. Plouffe pointed out how Senator McCain said "the fundamentals of our economy remain strong" and while that definitely hurt, it really didn't matter by then. The damage was done.

Plouffe also points out some "tricks" the campaign tried including Joe The Plumber as well as the suspension of the campaign. I didn't view either of these as being tricks, especially Joe The Plumber because the wealth distribution strategy of Obama is being played out today. The real reason why Joe Plumber didn't resonate more is that early voting had kicked in and a significant amount of people already casted their votes. It just didn't happen earlier enough in the campaign, but it was hardly a trick.

Finally, on to Bill Ayers. We (as part of the RNC) ran tons of ads online on Obama's association. The RNC built a mock Facebook page called Barack Book (Cyrus Krohn's idea) and we spent millions in advertising dollars driving to that page. We also ran dollars highlighting ACORN. I personally built the search campaigns around these sites and Ayers, ACORN, and other future czars and questionable associations were featured. We still lost. Don't tell me we didn't talk enough about this. The facts are, enough people didn't care or didn't want to believe the association - unfortunately a lot of them do now.

That's it on Plouffe's book. Call me bitter or not, but the end of the book felt rushed and a little cynical. I personally believe that Obama was the perfect candidate and they had a great Digital team led by Joe Rospars that made a lot of great moves at the right time. Without all of that money, all of the great use of Digital, an economy that imploded. and an unpopular President Bush, perhaps McCain had a chance. Unfortunately, reading Plouffe's book proved to me that without a miracle, the match was over by the middle of September.

The conservative blogosphere unleashed a torrent of criticism against Mike Huckabee Monday after a man whose sentence he commuted as Arkansas governor was suspected of gunning down four police officers in Washington state over the weekend. via www.politico.com

PardonMyFrench - Before my comment, just a clarification point. I like Mike Huckabee. I've never worked for him or his PAC and of course made no donations to his 2008 campaign (I maxed out on McCain). I also did grow to like him more because he helped us out on the McCain campaign by always attacking Mitt Romney. If he ever became a client of ours, I'd gladly work for him/PAC. Back to the commentary on this issue....

During the 2008 primary season there were 2 negative issues that followed Huckabee – the soft on crime with the large amount of clemencies and his tax, spending record in Arkansas; as I recall, Club for Growth was pounding Huckabee on this record. I don't remember for sure, but I believe Club for Growth ran anti-Huckabee TV ads in primary states, but can't be sure.

While he clearly appeals to the value/social conservatives the hard on crime, anti-tax/anti-spending crowd will NEVER let this die especially out of the gate in the next primary season. He’ll get hounded by anyone positioning themselves to the right of him - let alone anyone trying to position themselves as an electable moderate. I'm thinking the attacks on McCain for immigration reform, but in Huckabee's case there is documented numbers to back up these talking points.

Back in 2008, Huckabee came out of nowhere in Iowa, was an after thought in NH, NV, MI, setting up the battle in South Carolina with McCain which was really Huckabee's last stand. I could literally write a research paper on all of the targeted advertising we did in South Carolina to minimize Huckabee's impact in the state (I also campaigned in the state for McCain) - display ads, click to play video ads, in-state regional media buys, paid search, etc

In between IA and SC it was McCain versus Romney, followed by McCain's win in Florida (final round versus Romney) and then onto Super Tuesday which turned into a victory lap for McCain.

Other than SC, we pretty much left him alone. Huckabee won’t be afforded this “luxury” to be viewed as an unknown next time around; the other candidates will come after him from start on these two issues.

I like him, but I think this episode makes it very difficult for him. I wouldn’t be shocked if he stays out of the race. Then again, his PAC is popular, he has his own platform on his radio show, and there are plenty of social conservatives (there is potentially Palin to worry about and I doubt she'd leave him alone).

My second summary of President Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe's Book The Audacity to Win. Here's a link to Part 1. Oh and as a quick reminder, I'm Connell Donatelli Inc's Chief Internet Strategist and directed Senator McCain's Online Advertising going back to his Straight Talk America PAC right through to the end of the General Election. I was mostly located in NJ but did spend some time in the Virginia offices so my comments are from my cheap seats in NJ. If you want a good recap visit this link called 2008 Election Recount.

As of this post, I'm about 70 pages from the end and right up to the point where Plouffe talks about McCain picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. Here's some interesting points/comments on the book....

With about a month to go before Iowa, Clinton's Chief Strategist Mark Penn commented that Obama's supporters looked like Facebook which I found shockingly odd. Early on, these social networks like YouTube and Facebook were the best place to go for cheap advertising and communications and that comment showed how out of touch the Clintons were to the 2008 election. We (McCain Camp) did pay attention to Facebook & YouTube and put out a ton of videos. Our biggest issue with Facebook was that we didn't raise a ton of money, so that put it lower on the priority list. Quite frankly, our candidate didn't really resonate until around the General Election in Facebook.

Obama wins Iowa and Plouffe writes about the win on page 137 which is about 1/3 of the book. If this doesn't prove to you how important it is for a challenger campaign nothing will. Plouffe talks about how important the internet was for getting out their message. And contrary to what you know, the internet was extremely important to the McCain campaign especially after the implosion in the summer. Throughout the summer and fall, right up until December 2007 the internet was the only way we advertised our message - either via search, display, and/or web videos. By the time we finished a close 4th in Iowa (Huckabee wins it) we had figured out how important the search traffic was leading up to Primary votes. 100,000s of people turned to the internet the few days before Primary day and since Iowa, we ran mini state search & display campaigns to take advantage of the opportunity.

New Hampshire and the month of January proved to be a great and a difficult month. Obama raised $35 million yet (I believe) they relaxed just a bit after reading Plouffe's account and lost New Hampshire to Clinton. They then "lose" Nevada on the 19th but received more delegates and that's when the Obama campaign figured out that the way Democrats divided up the delegates meant that a) losing can get you a ton of delegates if done correctly and b) you had to win by a lot to put a distance in the delegate counts. They proved how to win big in South Carolina. Now New Hampshire to us was do or die and we put everything into it that we had. As I recall I was running stand alone state advertising in New Hampshire as early as the summer 2008. We of course won New Hampshire and besides Clinton showing some human side to her, I believe a lot of Independents voted for McCain because he needed it more than Obama. We followed with losses in Michigan and Nevada only to come roaring back with our own wins in South Carolina and Florida. Our Florida win proved our online marketing prowess once again when overnight the entire Connell Donatelli team created new Crist endorsement ads on a Friday night and flipped out all of our ads across Florida in our Florida Surge tactic. Finally, to put fund raising in perspective, we had a great month bringing in about $12.7 million, about 2/3 less than Obama.

Across those early states, it was clear to me after reading Plouffe's book that we were already in trouble for the General Election, yet didn't know it and didn't care about it in January 2008. Obama had already out raised us $140 million to $55 million and had 35 million more individual small donations than we did. We would end up losing all of those early states with the exception of South Carolina.

Plouffe goes through a lot of details on how they handled the problems with Reverend Wright. You can read for yourself how the process unfolded including Obama's speech on racism in this country. I think they handled the entire problem in the best possible manner - in fact, so well that they took this issue off the table for the General Election. I firmly believe that McCain did the right thing by NOT bringing up Wright during the GE. It didn't help Hillary in PA and certainly wouldn't help us - we lost because the wrong track/right track numbers were 70/30, President Bush, the economy and the huge differences in money. Bringing up Reverend Wright in the General Election wouldn't have solved those problems - in fact, I even ran negative keywords to insure our ads didn't show on his name.

Finally, on page 236 Plouffe rips on a newly developed, yet shortly lived campaign slogan the communications group developed for McCain which was "A Leader We Can Believe In". I remember spending some time researching the organic search results on this set of words and while McCain eventually owned this phrase, when I originally looked at it, it had Obama's website listed in the #1 spot. Personally, I thought the slogan was a bad idea, but nobody asked for my opinion on it, just what I thought the search results looked liked.

Well, as of this post, I'm almost done with the book. Next post should just about do it...

You long time readers know that as part of Connell Donatelli I had a 3rd row seat to Senator McCain's Presidential run starting from online marketing his Straight Talk America PAC, through the Primaries including the summer 2007 blowup, and through the General Election. I was lucky to be part of a small group that made it all the way through.

That's why I was quite interested to read David Plouffe's book The Audacity to Win as he chronicles his management of President Obama's campaign from beginning to end. I got the book from Amazon about a week ago along with Chuck Todd's How Barack Obama Won (a book that looks at polling data state by state) which provides a helpful companion by looking at the end numbers. I'm about a third through the book, but here's some of my notes....

Right from the very beginning they focused on Iowa - in fact I'm on page 103 and I'm still reading about Iowa. The reason was simple, using polling data they realized that Clinton was strong elsewhere and needed to show strong results out of the gate. This was different from my experience with the McCain campaign and while I wasn't there day to day so I could have missed something, I didn't hear much about Iowa until Rick Davis came back to the campaign in the summer of 2007 and then all we heard was early states...

Speaking (really writing) about where I was located, Plouffe insisted early on that everyone be headquartered in Chicago to ease communications. When I read that, I felt lucky and sad at the same time. Lucky that I could work out of NJ for most of the time, but sad because I know I missed a lot. Knowing what I know now, if you want to make significant contributions in a Presidential campaign you need to move especially during the General if you get that far.

At Obama's first two campaign stops he had over 10K people show up. 10K in Iowa at an event about a year before the caucus? There was no mention of a MeetUp tactic (like Dean's campaign) and those kind of numbers we would have killed for. In fact, we used to run Google Ads to drive people to signup for McCain's events prior to Palin's selection (didn't need that tactic anymore once she showed up). So for every bitter Republican that complains about our campaign, I can't think of a single Primary candidate that could bring 10K people to an event in Iowa 1 year before the caucus. Think about how that enthusiasm for Obama lasted into the General Election.

The internet operations led by Joe Rospars reported directly into Plouffe showing how important it was to them. According to the book, funny enough at the time, the internet operations took heat for not raising enough money in the beginning. Also early on they asked for people to just signup on their website to get involved with the campaign. That was way different from my experience because right from day 1 the Search operations was geared towards raising money, which we did at an awesome rate of $4 in donations for every $1 we spent. We had plenty of plans for growing emails but time and time again we were asked to raise money.

Very early on, the Obama online store for clothing and items was a huge success. We didn't have that luxury until probably the summer of 2008. Again this gave them a leg up on us a long time before the General Election - people showing support that early on...

I'm back from an 8 day vacation in the Happiest Place on Earth - Florida version so I have a lot of posts to catch up on. Don't worry I'm going to avoid binge posting!

Back in June I wrote the reason Lonegan lost was the complete lack of use of modern internet marketing tools to get his message out to Republican Primary voters. Well, the Daggett campaign followed up that "case study" with an even worse internet effort which was confirmed by Ali with these words of political marketing folly "From our research, we have discovered that NJ voters are primarily reachable via TV and other media -- not internet -- and that is why we have focused our efforts where we have"

Look I've only been working as a consultant for 4 years in the political marketing arena and I focus almost exclusively on online advertising in this space. That runs the full range from search marketing, emails, displays ads, media buying, Facebook, and everything in between. I do focus on search and media buying, but that doesn't stop me from working in other areas. I've also been during pure online advertising since the late 90s (search, display, media buying) but where I was a little weak to start was translating into politics. However, I have a great teacher in Becki Donatelli and listen to everyone else I've had the pleasure of meeting and that includes smart people from the Democrats. One book I keep around is Joe Trippi's book The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Joe's book chronicles Howard Dean's rise and then fall in the 2004 Democratic primary. What powered Dean's rise may now seem a little quaint - MeetUp, blogs, campaign blogs and videos, heck even a fund raising bat on the homepage, but the message is applicable to every campaign starting way behind with little name recognition.

IF YOU ARE RUNNING AN INSURGENT CAMPAIGN YOUR ONLY AVENUE OF WINNING IS MAKING THE INTERNET THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF YOUR METHOD FOR GETTING YOUR MESSAGE OUT.

Steve Lonegan lost the Republican Primary to Chris Christie because he didn't use the internet and relied on tired and worn out marketing tactics like direct mail. Chris Daggett lost any momentum he gained via the debates because his campaign chose to ignore the internet at the insistence of their media company who of course made more money by NOT pushing their message out via cheaper and more effective channels. Without going into too much detail in tactics, here are my top 5 priorities insurgent campaigns MUST do

Start very early

Kick out traditional media agencies until there is enough money to buy effective GRPs in target markets

Only use the internet for paid advertising because it is the most efficient, shows measurable results, and is the great equalizer when you are facing better funded campaigns

Invest in great creative developers especially ones like my friend Justin Germany who can create web ads and when you are ready, great TV ads.

Grassroots organizing is just not about going door to door and making phone calls, it involves using internet tools like Facebook, Google, wireless, and blogs to identify supporters, communicate with them, find like supporters, and then mobilize them.

That's how you run a modern insurgent campaign - not by listening to old style media consultants who insist the only way to run your campaign is by using old and really useless techniques. Don't end up like Steve Lonegan and Chris Daggett - people who wasted their opportunities by relying on 1970s styled marketing

Yes you should vote for Chris Christie on Tuesday. It is our only hope to rid the state of the economy killing, private job shrinking, and government expanding Governor Jon Corzine. Look I get that Christie hasn't explained how he is going to cut property taxes, restore rebates, and slow down the growth of government. I get that I really do. I also get that if you are a conservative he has pissed you off going back to the primary against Lonegan. However....

Chris Daggett is finished. He is not surging in the polls. Perhaps if he started earlier and used online effectively instead of listening to their traditional media agency (see the quote* below from Ali of the Daggett Campaign on why they didn't have any online strategy) he'd have a chance, but he listened to the wrong advisors.

Obama is extending his influence in the race even though he knows that Corzine has done a terrible job with this state in creating jobs and spurring the economy.

4 more years of Corzine is a horrible thought. And for each of you saying to yourselves, well if we have Corzine again at least next time we can run a conservative candidate. That's the wrong kind of thinking that led some of you conservatives to not vote for Senator McCain - and look how that has turned out.

If you are on the fence, vote Christie. If you are a conservative, hold your nose and vote Christie. If you want to make a protest vote for Daggett, now is the wrong election for a protest vote; the only thing that matters right now is to ditch Corzine and Christie is the only vote that can do it.

Sorry true believers. The way I look at this vote is to get rid of Corzine first and the only way to do that is to vote Chris Christie.

(Disclosure: I have had ABSOLUTELY NO INVOLVEMENT with the Christie Campaign. In fact, my 9 year old son still asks me why would I vote for him if he didn't hire me. Answer: CHRISTIE IS THE ONLY CHANCE TO GET RID OF JON CORZINE)

*Here's the bizarre, campaign strategy killing decision by the Daggett campaign to NOT use online to network, advertise, and generate grass roots support as posted by Ali from the Daggett Campaign (BOLD is done by me).

"From our research, we have discovered that NJ voters are primarily reachable via TV and other media -- not internet -- and that is why we have focused our efforts where we have. I can imagine you have strong opinions as to how we should be using our money, but actually the media company who has led every successful independent in this country is spearheading our efforts, so we are deferring to the experts."

(Disclosure: I received several emails after my last post. I am not involved with Christie's campaign. I've never spoken with them. I do want Corzine to lose and I AM NOT advocating that Daggett should drop out).

It doesn't matter. He has no online marketing. The website isn't ready for prime time, it looks he had a cousin build it for him on a WordPress template. There are no Google ads trying to direct people looking for information on him. I've seen no display ads, his Facebook fans are about 10% of his competitors and his YouTube page has little subscribers, little views, and really looks like it is a page dedicated for Halloween. There are no Facebook widgets to grab.

This isn't an insurgent campaign. There is little evidence to suggest that. If this campaign had a chance they would have been employing modern internet marketing techniques, however, I can't find a single piece of evidence that the Daggett campaign even noticed what happened in the 2008 election. Yes Daggett is receiving matching funds and this allows him to be in the debates which he has dominated so far. However, did anyone stop to ask besides paying his staff and buying political signs what he plans to do with the rest of the money?

Clearly it isn't to invest in modern marketing techniques. I've heard there was a live TV commercial floating around, but I haven't seen it live. One has to ask why on earth would they run TV ads in this market? How many GRPs could they actually buy? Could it even make a dent in your viewing habits if it could even cut through the Corzine buy? Does anyone want to bet me there will be a horrible waste of direct mail coming your way to a mailbox near you or annoying robo calls to your home phone?

If this was really an insurgent campaign someone there would have used online to network properly and market his plan. Maybe if Daggett had started ANYTHING online months ago they would have actually been viable. Unfortunately for them they didn't and they will end up being nothing more than the General Election's version of the Steve Lonegan campaign which also failed any semblance of a modern marketing plan.

At this point from my cheap seats in Long Valley, NJ Daggett isn't viable. I get that some people are disappointed with the Christie campaign and hate Jon Corzine. However, NJ needs to get rid of Corzine first and Daggett can't do it. I get the idea of a protest vote. I really do. This isn't the year for a protest vote.

After watching and reading the reports about last week's NJ Governor Debate it is pretty clear this race is really between the two Chris' - Christie and Daggett. Corzine's fate really rests with Daggett and Christie. I haven't received and didn't want to dig around for more detailed polling information, but it seems pretty clear to me that around 40% of the voters will vote for the hated, job killing, economic disaster Corzine. In stock buying terms, that's Corzine's support level.

Christie on the other hand, I have no idea what his support level is. That's not to be shrill, but I don't have inside polling data to know who are his definite or "1" voters. Also, for that matter, I don't know Corzine's but he consistently polls around 40%.

Daggett is interesting because he has qualified for state funds and I've seen him poll around 10%. However, like Lonegan from the primaries his website is horrible, I've seen little social networking, I've seen little search marketing, pretty much not much invested online. However, in the debates and in the press he is attracting attention and even garnering attention from some of my conservative friends.

The problem for Christie is Daggett. Usually in NJ you'd get the protest vote, but this time the protest looks reasonable to a large number of voters. If Daggett starts polling higher those numbers will come out of Christie. Check out this recent Google Trends chart to see how Daggett is starting to pick up interest. So that means:

Corzine wins with around 40% of the vote (WORST CASE) because Daggett surges into the 20s

Christie beats up Daggett and keeps him around 10% of the vote

Daggett in a miracle finish beats up Christie enough that he gets more than 40% of the vote

To me, this is the wrong year for a protest vote. We can't afford 4 more years of Corzine. Sorry Daggett fans, but unless he starts polling around 30% he isn't viable. He needs more of a surge and while that is possible and he has some time, I don't think Daggett has the marketing or grassroots support to really make up the distance; too bad he didn't start sooner. BTW - if you really are a Chris Daggett fan - more power to you, but to the NJ voters into a protest vote against Christie and Corzine, now is NOT the year.

The other day while working on an online advertising campaign for one of our clients I came across the following text ad from FightTheSmears.com. It's obviously an ad trying to debunk the theories that President Obama is not a US citizen. However, I found this ad interesting on a number of fronts...

It is September 2009 which is almost a full three years before President Obama's reelection.

I found another ad in Google's Content Targeting network which suggests either a tactic to massively expand out the campaign and/or garner dirt cheat impressions. Notice I wrote impressions and not clicks. Text ads in Google's Content Network woefully under-perform and I always recommend to not waste your time with them.

They are also running paid search ads to intercept people looking for this information, but what I find very fascinating is that the Google Search Trends on this topic is slowing down and appears to be limited to a few states in the South and West.

The actual text ad I grabbed was an in-text video overlay on top of a YouTube video about a California Small Business Owner ripping into her Congressmen at a Town Hall Meeting on Obama Care. It takes a little more effort to put this ad inro your AdWords system so clearly this is something they wanted to do.

Is the Obama Administration really that concerned about the birther theories that they will run ads almost 3 years before a massive amount of people will care again? If you ran the trends back to fall 2008 you'll see that the peak was really October 2008 which of course was right before the election. However, they are spending time, energy, and money to really blast this message out via Google's Content Network and YouTube. The in-text video overlay clearly shows that they are ok with a very loose targeting and even though it is really out of context (ObamaCare versus Obama's Birth Certificate) they are getting an impression view of the message.

Then again there is always the flip side that could be happening. That's is since the Trends are slowing and it appears that most of the significant traffic is from the South and West, wouldn't they be better off just leaving this alone? Aren't they potentially fueling the fire by keeping this alive and being defensive? Heck even risking that the impressions that are being served will leave the reverse message in the viewers mind since the ad isn't really in the right context?

BTW - just to drive you readers crazy, is it possible that Obama is ok with the wrong message? Perhaps they think that by keeping it out there that they are making the extreme right side of the Republican base seem a little crazier than normal. Perhaps by responding in this matter they can keep the issue alive, driving a wedge between potential independent voters who may not want to be associated with birthers?

Unless Obama has data for my last theory, at this point I'd recommend shutting this campaign down. It really makes them look defensive on an issue that has lost steam. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised that they have polling data to support my last theory. At any rate, it is clear that the Obama Administration will be a never ending campaign and unlike past administrations the next election will always be front and center. That's certainly a change from the past.

I just received another email from The White House trying to debunk the myths regarding health reform and once again Obama is way over promising the benefits to Health Care Reform found in the House version of the bill being debated. I took the quiz and my results are shown below. What bothers me the most once again is Obama is stretching the truth on what I will receive. The two areas that bother me the most are the points surrounding keeping your current plan and small business' receiving credits to offset the costs. Obama is not telling the full truth because there are NO GUARANTEES that you will keep your current plan and NO GUARANTEES that small business will receive a credit.

Obama White House Myth #1:Reform will allow you to keep the coverage you have if you want to. As I wrote in my first post titled "Dear David Axelrod Check Your Facts Before You Spin About Keeping Your Health Insurance" it simply isn't a promise that the House Bill backs up. Your current health care can be grandfathered for 5 years provided it makes ZERO changes to terms, conditions, and payouts which is frankly unlikely. And, what happens after year 5? Your health plan must be part of the exchange otherwise you can't keep it. My question to you is - do you think the Obama administration is being less than truthful by promising you WILL be ALLOWED to KEEP you coverage?

Obama White House Myth #2: Reform will offer tax credits and assistance to families, and to small businessesso they can offer competitive, affordable rates to their employee. As I wrote in my second post titled Dear David Axelrod I Checked Your Facts on Small Business and You're Wrong Again. While it is true there are some credits that will be made available to small businesses in the House Health Care Bill it is too convuluted and too risky to over promise these credits; in fact, I believe that these small businesses would rather take a penalty and not offer health insurance. Any employee including the owners that make $80K or more per year will be excluded for any credit plus the credits are lowered by the amount of payroll above $20K per year for the company. So, how much credit do you really think a small business will be receiving?

Anyway, it really disturbs me the length Obama will go to sell this reform on the American public. When he was elected he promised a new way of non-partisan governing. Unfortunately we are getting a classic Liberal President who will stop at nothing to shield the full truth from the public in order to sell what he thinks is the right course of action.

Don't think for a second that Obama isn't aware of the language in the bill. He knows as does the rest of the staff. They are betting that they can sell this to the uninformed public.

So I've been spending some time reading the Health Reform Bill currently getting trashed in congress via Open Congress and I'm fired up again due to the marketing by the Obama Administration. The latest is the propaganda they are spreading on making insurance affordable for small business. When I read the bill, I see the ability to take advantage of credits, but it is NOT absolute as Axelrod and the rest of the administration would have you believe. Here's an excerpt from the now infamous SPAM mailing by the Obama Administration with David Axelrod's signature on it...

"Reform will benefit small business - not burden it: It’s a myth that health insurance reform will hurt small businesses. To the contrary, reform will ease the burdens on small businesses,provide tax credits to help them pay for employee coverage and help level the playing field with big firms who pay much less to cover their employees on average."

The plans have a tax credit for small businesses to help them provide health insurance for their workers, to reward them for doing the right thing by their employees.

So logically the small business owner would think that they are definitely going to get a credit as a reward for doing the right thing. Right? No reasons NOT to support this right? Well as usual the Obama administration plays around with words and sells way too much with something as sensitive as health care. Here's what the bill actually says regarding the small business credit..

SEC. 45R. SMALL BUSINESS
EMPLOYEE HEALTH COVERAGE CREDIT

‘(a) In General- For purposes of section 38, in the case of a
qualified small employer, the small business employee health coverage credit
determined under this section for the taxable year is an amount equal to the
applicable percentage of the qualified employee health coverage expenses of
such employer for such taxable year. ‘(b) Applicable Percentage-‘(1) IN GENERAL- For purposes of this section, the applicable
percentage is 50 percent. ‘(2) PHASEOUT BASED ON AVERAGE COMPENSATION OF EMPLOYEES- In the
case of an employer whose average annual employee compensation for the taxable
year exceeds $20,000, the percentage specified in paragraph (1) shall be
reduced by a number of percentage points which bears the same ratio to 50 as
such excess bears to $20,000.‘(c) Limitations-‘(1) PHASEOUT BASED ON EMPLOYER
SIZE- In the case of an employer who employs more than 10 qualified employees
during the taxable year, the credit determined under subsection (a) shall be
reduced by an amount which bears the same ratio to the amount of such credit
(determined without regard to this paragraph and after the application of the
other provisions of this section) as--(A) the excess of--‘(i) the number of qualified employees
employed by the employer during the taxable year, over (ii) 10, bears to‘(B) 15.‘(2) CREDIT NOT ALLOWED WITH RESPECT
TO CERTAIN HIGHLY COMPENSATED EMPLOYEES- No credit shall be allowed under
subsection (a) with respect to qualified employee health coverage expenses paid
or incurred with respect to any employee for any taxable year if the aggregate
compensation paid by the employer to such employee during such taxable year
exceeds $80,000.

Ok, now I can't quite figure out all of this jargon but here's what I do understand and why the Obama Administration is WRONG for promoting this in absolute terms because there are quite a number caveats on the credit:

You receive NO CREDIT for an employee that makes more than $80K per year. That's not so good in a bunch of states like say New Jersey. This exception also means that the owners of these businesses are also counted as employees, so probably you are NOT going to SEE ANY CREDIT for your own health insurance.

The credit gets phased out by some percentage if your TOTAL company payroll is greater than $20K which means the only way to get the full 50% credit is if your entire payroll is less than $20K. Wow that's generous.

Finally the credit is also reduced by some percentage if you employ more than 10 but less than 15 employees.

Seriously people does this sound like the Obama Administration should be marketing the small business health credit in the manner in which it does? Right off the bat all of your HIGHLY PAID EMPLOYEES INCLUDING THE OWNERS WHO MAKE $80K OR MORE ARE EXCLUDED. Then if you have other employees, you've probably already busted the $20K payroll threshold so any credit you make on anyone making less than $80K will be reduced.

I think the Obama Administration should be ashamed of themselves for marketing the small business credit in this manner. It is definitely not an ABSOLUTE credit and probably at the end of the day small businesses will be better off paying the fine and pushing employees to the public option rather than providing the benefits with these potential credits.

This will be a quick post. NJ's unemployment rate inched up to 9.3% and remains at a 32 year high. Sure the rate has slowed. However, for Governor I know How To Lie With Statistics Jon Corzine to send out an email promoting 13K new private sector jobs in NJ is a low point in politics. Oh and to back up his crap he talked about how our unemployment is lower than the national average.

Look Corzine, this is a lie and you know it. You can try and spin these numbers to suit your political purposes but to the workers in NJ we see and feel the unemployment. I know every email you try and tie Christie to President Bush and Karl Rove but they wouldn't stoop to this level of lies with statistics.

By now, you've probably seen the Gun Lobby-sponsored Republican advertising
against me. You know, the ones that say, "watch what he does, not what he
says."

Well, the new numbers on job creation in New Jersey came out today, so, for a
change of pace, let's listen to the Republicans and take a
close look at what my administration has done about creating jobs in New
Jersey:

13,000 private sector jobs
were added last month because of our business-friendly policies.

At the same time, our
continued focus on increasing efficiency in government led to a reduction
in 7,000 public sector jobs.

These are inescapable, indisputable facts that our first-in-the-nation
economic recovery package is working, and that not only are businesses staying
in New Jersey, but they're actually growing. Small businesses are taking
advantage of the programs we're offering in the state, and job creation numbers
are going up as a result.

Not even Karl Rove can spin that success away.

Since the earliest days of this national crisis, I've made New Jersey's economy
my first, second, and third priority. I was determined to ensure that our state
is well-positioned to take advantage when this global economic recession turns
around, and we are beginning to see the effects.

We're seeing these results because we put New Jersey's share of the federal
stimulus right to work into transportation and infrastructure projects, passed
programs like the Invest New Jersey initiative which offers a $3000 grant to
small-business for every new job created, and signed a second economic stimulus
package two weeks ago to ensure that we keep New Jersey's recovery going
strong.

Make no mistake, we still have a long way to go and there is much work
still to be done, but my administration's recovery initiatives are fostering
job creation, while President Obama's recovery program is helping to restore
economic confidence.

Like a lot of Americans today I received your email today regarding health reform. As usual the propaganda you and the rest of the Obama administration send out requires a deep understanding of what exactly you are saying. The first 8 reforms that you list are 8 that a majority of Americans would agree with (me included), but what prompted me to write this letter to you was this section about keeping your own health insurance if that's what you desire:

You can keep your own
insurance. It’s myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or
force you to change doctors. To the contrary, reform will expand your
choices, not eliminate them.

Mr. Axelrod, that's simply not an accurate picture or description of what's in the current version of House Bill # 3200 America's Affordable Health Choice Act of 2009. When you write it WILL NOT ELIMINATE THEM OR YOU CAN KEEP YOUR OWN INSURANCE those are simply too absolute descriptions that do not currently describe the language in the bill. So I'm very confused as to why you would describe something in this manner when the bill contains the following language:

Your plan can be grandfathered as long as the insurer does not change ANY terms & conditions including benefits and cost sharing. That simply seems to be an impossibility over time, but at the onset of this plan it is probably technically accurate.

There is a grace period of 5 years. After 5 years what happens????

Any insurance that is not grandfathered must then qualify for the exchange. I think this part is added to close any possible loopholes in writing a bill, but then again who knows?

I reprinted the exact language below. As an American with concerns on health insurance (if you personally knew me instead of the hello you gave me as this year's AAPC you'd understand what I mean), I find it shameful at the absolutes you and the rest of Obama administration put around keeping your current insurance.

Why wouldn't you simply say "you can can your current insurance for the first 5 years as long as there is no change to ANY terms including benefits and cost sharing"? Isn't that the more accurate description? Wouldn't that be fairer to average Americans trying to understand this bill.

If I'm wrong in interpreting this current bill, please let me know. I may not be part of the Administration but I have a degree in Engineering from Rutgers as well as a MBA from Rutgers, so I'm pretty sure I have the intellect to interpret words like grandfathered and grace period. However, once again if I'm wrong, I'm happy to correct this post. I'd really like to know your thoughts.

PardonMyFrench and thanks,

Eric

P.S. Mr Axelrod, you'll notice I didn't give the tougher argument but the one I believe in which is after a public option is introduced it will be too hard for private companies to compete or worse, businesses will gladly pay the $750 per employee fine to drop offering health care coverage and force everyone to the public option.

-----------------------COPY OF THE BILL REGARDING GRANDFATHERED PLANS

Grandfathered
Health Insurance Coverage Defined- Subject to the succeeding provisions
of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under
this division, the term ‘grandfathered health insurance coverage’ means
individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and
effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:

(1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT

(A)
IN GENERAL- Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health
insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual
in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after
the first day of Y1.CommentsClose CommentsPermalink

(B)
DEPENDENT COVERAGE PERMITTED- Subparagraph (A) shall not affect the
subsequent enrollment of a dependent of an individual who is covered as
of such first day

(2)
LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR CONDITIONS- Subject to paragraph (3)
and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its
terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in
effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.

IN GENERAL- The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby,
for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning
with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day
before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to
a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the
essential benefit package requirement under section 121

TRANSITIONAL TREATMENT AS ACCEPTABLE COVERAGE- During the grace period
specified in paragraph (1)(A), an employment-based health plan that is
described in such paragraph shall be treated as acceptable coverage
under this division.

(1) IN GENERAL- Individual health insurance coverage that is not
grandfathered health insurance coverage under subsection (a) may only
be offered on or after the first day of Y1 as an Exchange-participating
health benefits plan.

I read Jason's post-email regarding his case against Apple in 5 Parts and before I go through my thoughts quickly, all I kept thinking about is, is this the type of long term buyer's remorse a lot of Independents will have when it comes to their Obama vote? Jason's rant for the most part is a lot of buyer's remorse and changed expectations from someone who has spent a ton of money and time engrossed with Apple's products as well as competitor's products, So, I can't help but think is President Obama the Steve Jobs of Presidents? Let's take a look at Jason's 5 points, my thoughts on his Apple points, and why it reminds me of President Obama.

Destroying MP3 through anti-competitive prices - Basically Jason rants, since Apple doesn't allow other MP3 players to hook into iTunes they are uncompetitive. Jason wrote this classic line which reminds me of President Bush-President Obama; imagine if President Bush had asked people to report "fishy" emails to the White House like President Obama did? Where is the outrage from main street media:

Why, then, does Steve Jobs get a pass?Steve Jobs gets a pass because we are all enabling him to be a jerk.
We buy the products and we say nothing when our rights are stripped
away. We’ve been seduced by Steve Jobs: he lifts another shiny object
over his head with a new eco-friendly feature and we all melt like
screaming schoolgirls at Shea Stadium in ‘65.

Monopolistic practices in telecommunications - Basically the argument that the iPhone only works on AT&T's network and while I personally don't like that, I don't think this is anti-competitive.Now this isn't an easy to stretch to Obama, but what reminds me of Obama is the logic that a few people in Washington know more than the people out in the real world. That's basically the logic around Obama's spending plan which has NOT don't anything to stimulate job growth and is in fact, woefully behind their own forecasts. Even when a seemingly good # comes out which is then debunked, they still tell you our way is working great. You try and tell them no, that's not right and you're called unAmerican.

Draconian App Store Policies - Basically every application has to be approved by Apple. I don't have any problem with that because well it is their store and there are ways around this, but he does make a good argument. Again it reminds me of Obamacare and the mandated use of exchanges to only allow health insurance plans that conform to Government minimum requirements (as of right now your current health plan can be grandfathered until a change is made)

Being a Horrible Hypocrite by banning other browsers - Jason is 100% correct here and Apple should allow other browsers to be used. He wrote this paragraph which again reminds me of Obama's no vote against Justice Roberts but when Republicans voted against Sotomayer they get ridiculed - i.e. Obama being a hypocrite when it comes to a supreme court confirmation. Apple was more than willing to pile on after Microsoft’s disasterous
inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows. In fact, what Apple is
doing is 100x worse than what Microsoft did. You see, Microsoft simply
included their browser in Windows, still allowing other browsers to be
installed. In Apple’s case, they are not only bundling their browser
with the iPhone, but they are BLOCKING other browsers from being
installed.

Blocking the Google Voice Application - same as #3 above but he does write this which reminds me of President Obama deciding which businesses and industries are too big to fail and instead of letting the free market decide he extends plans like cash for clunkers. Let people have three or four phone services coming in to their iPhones
and perhaps charge a modest licensing fee for those types of service.
Or, just simply stop being jerks and let the free market decide how to
use the data services they’ve BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. That’s the joke of
this: you’re paying for the data services that Apple is blocking. You
pay for the bandwidth and Apple doesn’t let you use it because, you
know, they know better than you how you should consume your data
minutes.

Anyway, I thought whether you agreed with it or not, Jason's post was very insightful. I personally found it very foretelling of the buyer's remorse Independent voters may have if all of these Washington knows best programs don't do what is advertised.

I get a morning briefing every day from RedState and one of the links today was about a paragraph in a White House blog post about reporting misinformation on health care reform. Put aside the scary notion of not qualifying what misinformation means which was the point of the RedState post, I went a read the White House blog post and watched two videos. Now before I come to some conclusions here are four points that worry me and what I find interesting about President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Health Care Reform.

Ok so here's what has me worried. President Obama is a proponent of a Single Payer option but he knows he can't get it. The public option is the next best thing. Passing health care reform without a public option won't happen according to Nancy Pelosi because the liberal votes on the Democratic side of the House won't agree to a proposal without it. And, that's what's so fascinating and so scary about this situation.

Nobody likes listening to Pelosi. She is ground zero for partisan politics.

The American Public historically gives low marks to the House. However,

People still like President Obama, but

Obama knows that he doesn't have the votes without a Public Option so he can use smooth words to say - it isn't a must-have for the Administration and he can also use smooth words that say - well if the private sector can't compete with the public version well, isn't that the free market at work?

President Obama gives great news conferences but Pelosi is his attack person. Basically a good cop-bad cop tactic on health care reform.

I don't believe a private sector company can compete with a massively funded public option. Private sector companies have share holders and profit/loss statements while the public option has Congressmen who need to please roughly 51% of their voters and are devoid of profit and loss responsibilities; plus, the Government can keep funding them more and more with a single vote or change the rules to benefit the public option.

To me - this is as simple as FedEx & UPS versus the US Postal Service for home mail delivery (not packages and next day air). If FedEx and UPS could actually deliver letters (ie mail) to your home, the US Postal Service would have been finished a long time ago. However, we keep the USPS in business by allowing them to increase the cost of mail and by NOT allowing the private sector to deliver mail into your home. (BTW - here's the language about the USPS monopoly via the Wikipedia link above - FedEx and United Parcel Service
(UPS) directly compete with USPS express mail and package delivery
services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages.
Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent
letters and may not use U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial
destinations)

Once the public option is in force, any rules can be set to force any real private sector companies out of business. That's what worries me about the Health Exchanges. This really is the march to Single Payer

President Obama is smooth and gives reasonable sounding, view graph deep answers that makes you sound like an idiot if you don't agree (hence the misinformation paragraph on their website - see below). He knows he doesn't have the votes in the House, but he lets the House leadership do his dirty work while he appears to be pragmatic. Fascinating and scary at the same time.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

-------------White House Blog-------------

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out
there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.
These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or
through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them
here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an
email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that
seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

According to the video Scott Wagman relied heavily on the internet to get his message out. That's good for him.

Scott believed (guessing here) that Google ads and Facebook ads were kosher without the disclosure as per Federal guidelines that gave an exception to these small ads.

Florida's Election Commission believes the ads violate their state disclosure rules. They give exceptions for bumper stickers and buttons, yet didn't think about search ads EVEN THOUGH NATIONAL CAMPAIGNS RAN A TON OF ADS DURING THE PRIMARY AND GENERAL.

Look, don't try and tell me that Florida's Election Commission never noticed the national ads in the past few years so to not take some time to issue updated guidelines and then flag a local guy using them is well, pure BS.

A lot of local elections have a lot of, how should I write this, personal issues and some times (not all), a competitor or competitor supporter files a complaint. I don't know if that's the case here, but it seems strange that the campaign relying on online advertising gets flagged.

Generally speaking I'm a state's right kind of guy but this is a case of where the states are clueless. To turn a blind eye to what's going on at the national level and rule on a campaign that desperately needs the internet is shameful. BTW - it highlights that Google has a long way to go in policy education.

I've written a series of post regarding the year's NJ Gubernatorial race and up until recently the lack of online advertising that I've seen has been disappointing. That is until the Jon Corzine campaign started to put the Obama online advertising playbook into action. The Chris Christie campaign however, remains in the internet advertising fog of war with the occasional email message or Facebook post. This of course has me very concerned because this state needs to make Corzine a one term and done Governor. Here's what I'm seeing:.

Facebook - Both candidates have low involvement. Corzine 09 page has 1665 supporters while his Governor page has 9588. Christie has 4681 fans. Christie's numbers are a nice jump since the last time I looked but Corzine has lost some (no surprise, but more on that later). I do get messages from Christie, but few and far between.

Email Marketing - The Corzine campaign is good for about 3 per week while the Christie campaign maybe sends one out once per week and that's very sad.

YouTube - Check out the pages of both candidates. Not much going on here for either of them.

Paid Search - Corzine has launched a newbie style paid search campaign with only minimum changes to the text ads and clicks driven to the homepage (very search marketing 101). However, Christie is doing ZERO marketing here which is scary. The only support he is getting is from John McCain's Country First PAC (hmm I wonder who is directing that) and some enterprising 529 groups. BTW - this image shows that Corzine is advertising on Christie's name.

Display Advertising - Corzine is already running them and while they are decently constructed showing some planning for the ads, they once again show a lack of creative optimization and click through to the homepage. Christie - ZILCH but support from similar folks from the paid search area.

Polling Data shows that Christie is still ahead but Corzine has reversed his downward spiral and his poll growth increase surprising looks like his website growth. Plus, most Jersey folks aren't paying attention now and are thinking about the shore which makes the numbers unreliable.

What does all mean? Well Corzine will be the text book example of what happens if a candidate without Obama's charisma, grass roots support, imagery, and likability does by using Obama's marketing playbook. Hopefully the Christie campaign has more modern marketing tools in their tool belt come Labor Day but it will be an uphill battle given Corzine early foray into online marketing.

Well the NJ General Election for Governor has started and Corzine's campaign has wasted no time in borrowing Obama's Marketing playbook. I've already received about 3 long emails from them plus links to videos on their YouTube video channel (I can't bring myself to link to anything to do with that campaign, so sorry).

Their latest state of the campaign video is actually a compete joke when they talked about how brave Corzine was after his accident which was self inflicted when he refused to wear a seat belt while his driver was speeding on a highway on his way to an Imus interview. As a reminder, here's Corzine's accident story so I find it appalling that his campaign would in any way shape or form describe him as being brave.

Anyway, Corzine the Governor has 9200 Facebook friends while Corzine the Candidate has about 1900 friends. So this got me thinking....

Corzine's campaign studied Obama's campaign playbook and will try hard to duplicate it

Corzine can't give a speech and can't even pass himself off as a man of the people

and finally, it is extremely hard to run a grass roots networking campaign when you don't have the charisma of Obama and can't generate passion among the voters when you are well hated by the electorate.

However, what Corzine does have going for him is a crap load of money and President Obama. If you watch any of their boring, poorly shot videos or read any of their novel sized emails you'll see that

They will not run on his crappy job, economy, and spending record

They will push the linkage with Obama and Biden

They will pump up Obama's spending, stimulus plan and feature Corzine as a friend to the administration

Tie into anything to do with Obama - my guess is Corzine will only frequent the same restaurants as Obama and start smoking the same cigarettes.

Corzine will do anything and spend anything to win. He will have President Obama with him, so I do hope the Christie campaign starts quickly on their internet strategy, otherwise we are just handing over that territory to someone who does not deserve reelection.

BTW - Hat tip to my friend Mark. The knuckleheads at camp Corzine prove my points with their "ineptitudeness" on natural search results. Clearly they know how important natural search is from Obama's marketing playbook, they just don't have the experience to the plan into correct action. Here's a screen shot of the natural search results for the keyword "jon corzine". Clearly the Corzine campaign will be the case study of marketing like President Obama without Obama's skills as a campaigner or without the experts who ran his eMarketing campaign.

The administration always says creating or saved, hoping you will not be paying attention. They then put it under transparency and you are supposed to feel good. They show videos and find a few people who did indeed have their job saved, but totaling up 100Ks of jobs is impossible. However, the stimulus plan is NOT creating jobs. The unemployment rate has climb to 9.4% and they refuse to tell you that because it doesn't meet with their creative marketing briefs. Here's a link where they talk about how good they are doing saving jobs; yes they do mention the actual job loss last month, but they market it without saying the unemployment rate is climbing. It is shameful and disgusting.

The stimulus plan is taking way too long to get pushed out. All Americans are accustomed to seeing unemployment rates, so in order to sell the stimulus plan and that the administration is performing well, they need to market a fictitious number because the real numbers still stink. Very sad.

About two weeks ago we were involved in some primary races in PA which of course meant a heavy dose of using Google for marketing. In fact, ALL down ballot races should run Google for marketing. Anyway, we were supposed to map our Google ad buy to targeted areas in the state. One of our selling points is that with Google you can target down to a zip code level so we could do an even better job of mapping the targeting strategy than the TV buy. The sales pitch went this way...

DM - of course you can target to individuals, but counties and zip codes are also used

TV - you are usually buying at the MSA level

Print - county for local levels and MSA for statewide races

Search - anything right?

Well it wasn't as easy as you'd think. Sure if the client gave me zip codes I could have loaded them up, but they didn't have them. What they did have was County targets, but Google doesn't allow for county targeting. You of course can hand draw for Congressional DIstrict targeting, but try doing that for more than one district.

It took me about 8 hours to map the buy using the major cities in each county that they wanted to target. It was a major pain in the seat, but I told the client we could do better targeting than TV. Sure it was better targeting but without County targeting it took forever which is very un-Google like.

I don't understand why Google doesn't supply County targeting? For that matter, I don't understand why Google doesn't supply some population estimate when listing cities. It would seem so matter of fact to include counties if Google is trying to grab a piece of the local marketing mix.

And, while I'm on my rant, I can't wait for Google to ad click to play video ads into the desktop AdWords Editor. Once I set the targeting up for this buy, it would have been nice to copy and paste the ads into different ad groups. However, we had to manually load each click to play video ad, ad group by ad group.

Anyway, still a huge fan of Google of course. AdWords is the best marketing tool available today and even the small marketer can act like a big advertiser with little to no money. I just wish they'd make a few more targeting tweaks to really go after local targets.

This post is dedicated to my good friend Chip B. whom I got into a big discussion about a month back on this very subject.

This is a picture of my brand new car. We bought it in the middle of March and it is our third car, The gas mileage on it sucks. Right now we are averaging 19 miles to the gallon, but for all you tree huggers out there - we've only filled the tank up once.

I love driving this car. It is so much fun that I've never run so many errands in my life. In case you are wondering - it is a 4 seat, Toyota Solara Sports Convertible with an in your face bright red paint job. Mary and I loved this car so much that we took a ride in March when it was 44 degrees outside - yes we had our winter coats on.

Anyway back to my post dedicated to Chip. A month back late night at his house we got into a big discussion on fuel efficient cars. My argument went like this...

Without Government intervention these cars are more expensive to buy when compared to similar match box crappy oil burners.

The Government will have to use tax dollars to bring these cars down in price - again using the wealth distribution process.

When the US Companies (exception is Ford) blew themselves up, the Obama Administration used this opportunity to swoop in and save these companies to put other tree hugging loons in control to build the cars that not enough people want unless you're in the Obama Administration or your last name is Pelosi.

If car companies built powerful, beautifully designed cars that people wanted and they were fuel efficient - that would be a win. However, the only way today to get fuel efficient cars is to build them no bigger than a shopping cart.

Now on May 19th, Obama introduced new fuel efficiency standards. As a goal I think they are good ones - I believe the timing is terrible. I also think standardizing them nationally is good too. I don't agree with tax subsidizing them. I don't agree with increasing costs of car manufacturing. I don't agree with forcing consumers to buy crappy little cars because that's what the Government wants. If car manufactures can build cars like my new one above and make it fuel efficient - than great but that ain't happening by 2016.

For my friend Chip, here are links to Wall Street Journal articles backing up my argument. This standard is nothing but bad news for consumers - unless you were planning on buying these crappy cars anyway...

Obama Says New Car-Fuel Rules Generate Certainty - A good summary of this leftist agenda item with this great line that proves my point about how the Obama Administration now controls these American Car companies so they can do their bidding "But the rules also will raise the cost of manufacturing new vehicles at
a time when the auto industry is struggling, and Chrysler LLC is in
bankruptcy, where it may soon be joined by General Motors Corp. Still, car makers have signaled support for the new standards,

We fought for the $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of advanced
technology vehicles in the Recovery Act," the official said, and "our
administration remains committed to policies to help bring the costs
down" for consumers.

The administration estimates fuel-economy regulations will add $1,300
on average to the price of new cars by 2016, but President Barack Obama
on Tuesday said fuel savings would offset those costs for the typical
motorist in three years

If prices are $4 per gallon, I think the math is pretty straightforward
for consumers," said Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade group that
participated in the negotiations that led to the fuel economy
agreement. "If we don't have prices like that, government is going to
have to provide more incentives to help overcome the upfront cost
differential of this new technology

Obama's Official Remarks - It includes of course well written lines that slip by the average voter like this one "If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a
result of this standard will pay off in just three years" - yeah? At what price per gallon and how many miles driven?

Anyway these new guidelines are so filled with bad agenda items that you should have woken up and dug a little deeper before you voted this guy into office. Sure, it sounded good cheering for change in the fall when he painted great pictures of fuel efficient SUVs and Sports Car, but that's not what you are getting here. You are getting shopping carts with engines, more expensive cars, and wealth distribution so folks can purchase cars that nobody wants right now. Thanks (yes I'm bitter in this post).

3.5 million create or save job forecast is based on a relatively conservative rule of thumb (I'm sure the forecast mechanism is conservative, the create a job metric you are forecasting is a bogus metric)

Many Republicans have criticized the administration's projections as untrustworthy and politically motivated.(They key is not to attack how they made the projections, but attack the actual type of number they are trying to forecast)

The figure of 3.5 million jobs saved or created, the report says, is
the difference between the projected number of jobs during the last
three months of 2010 with the stimulus and the projected number of jobs
without if there had been no stimulus plan (You see the create "job metric" is the variable derived from two forecasted numbers one of which you can't ever accurately measure)

The report also offers a new measure of the stimulus law's economic
effects: 6.8 million additional job-years between the signing of the
legislation and the end of 2012. A job-year represents one job held for
one year. (Obama adds a new number that sounds huge to confuse people and have idiots argue over a new number that is derived from another bad number - saved jobs)

The administration's practice of discussing jobs saved as well as
created is "a very clever device for providing future political cover," The 'jobs saved' part was a way for
them to say, 'The economy is still shrinking, but it would have shrunk
faster but for the good things that we did.' (What I've been writing all along).

I worked at AT&T for 10 years and 4 years in an internet measurement, analysis group that was part of Bell Labs for a while. At AT&T the retention game was trying to estimate who was likely to leave (a saved job) in order to get retention funding. Winback was easier to measure because you actually so the customer return to AT&T (a created job). SAVED CUSTOMERS WERE DERIVED NUMBERS AND EVEN BELL LABS COULDN'T ACCURATELY FORECAST THAT. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT CAN FORECAST A SAVED JOB?

Obama can not forecast A SAVED JOB because you'll never know what would have happened if we didn't spend money to help the economy. It is a completely derived, fictitious number that was undoubtedly created using proven statistical techniques, but at the end of the day, we will never know how many jobs we would have lost.

This is the only talking point that matters for Republicans. This is the smoking gun for the Obama administration. The news will continue to report actual job lost or actual job created (still losing jobs and the Federal Reserve said it may hit as high as 10% and remain high for years). This is how we should market ourselves and attack the administration in 2010. Actual jobs created or not, actual spending, and how the administration sold the created jobs number as a way of passing the stimulus plan. Any other talking points that don't involve jobs and unemployment will fall flat on the masses of people and doom Republicans in 2010.

I'm nearly finished with Kate Kaye's book Campaign '08 A Turning Point for Digital Media and as one of the folks quoted within the book I found it very fascinating. Why? It fills in a lot of the blanks and lifts some of the fogs of war I was unable to see during the campaign season. Plus it is a great resource to have at your finger tips if you'd like to get a quick view of the digital media tactics used during the 2008 season.

Kate grabbed a lot of quotes from people that were running or part of the digital strategies for each of the Presidential campaigns and she does a great job of putting them together in very relevant chapters. She also pulled some quotes from my blog which was completely cool by me. I actually got a kick out of some of the things I wrote over the past two years.

I learned quite a few things especially what the Obama campaign did with their digital campaign and it of course confirmed how ubiquitous I thought their marketing was. The book also confirmed for me the lack of digital marketing that pretty much all of the other campaigns did during the season.

Clinton Campaign - very little online advertising

Ron Paul - a lot of out sourcing to their supporters who in turn did marvelous things with it

Mitt Romney - a lot of advanced online advertising experimentation that I was jealous of, but in the end we won the Primary.

Once you read through the chapters you'll also confirm what I've been telling you for a while. The McCain Campaign did a tremendous amount of digital work, more than every other Presidential Campaign before 2008 and during 2008 with the exception of the Obama campaign. It is all there in Kate's book for you to read if you never believed what I wrote. Sure we had money problems, President Bush, and a few other challenges but we accomplished a lot even though we fell short of our ultimate goal.

Kate covers a lot of topics including search marketing, social networking, mobile, online advertising, and other subjects. Kate's book offers great perspective and insight on the tactics used; it is also a quick read and flows just like her informative ClickZ blogs. Between this book, Kate's ClickZ posts, my blog, and techPresident, you'll get an accurate picture of the digital tactics used during the race for the White House in 2008.

BTW - Kate's book might inspire me to write my own book on my experiences working with the McCain campaign and Connell Donatelli.

During the Presidential Campaign season I didn't realize I used search marketing for a very unique tactic - Political Rapid Response. In fact, while moderating a panel on search marketing at AAPC a lot of folks came up to me after the panel and asked me to elaborate on using search for Rapid Response. In this YouTube video, you can hear Peter Greenberger at 1:20 singing our accolades using search for Rapid Response. We used Rapid Response in quite a number of very high profile situations including:

Sarah Palin Defense - Forget about the day she was announced as McCain's running mate which is a whole different story, the story I like to tell is when I was called over to McCain's Hotel in Minneapolis on Labor Day during the convention to fix some search problems. In particular the truly disgusting blogging stories that tried to say that Governor Palin lied about giving birth to her last baby. Besides running Rapid Response on that story, we also bought words around the most search on keywords including Palin Nude Photo, Palin is Hot, Palin Vogue Photo and Sarah Palin Photos.

Joe The Plumber - You can see this post I made watching the search results on Joe The Plumber and you'll see we had a search campaign running within minutes of Senator McCain mentioning Joe The Plumber. That night I watched that debate from McCain campaign HQ in Crystal City, but had no idea it was going to be mentioned and built that campaign from scratch on the fly. Not only that, I put in thousands of economic and financial services terms in over night.

ACORN Voter Fraud - While driving my daughter to a doctor's appointment I had Fox News on when they were talking about a breaking story that involved fraudulent voter registration records submitted by ACORN. By the time I got home, I built a search campaign around ACORN and waited for the results to pop. It took a few days for the rest of MSM to pick the story up, but when it did, the campaign was already ready to go.

Rapid Response doesn't just have to be for political campaigns. Issue Advocacy can certainly use it as well as private companies and even news organizations (ex - Fox Sports). So how do you actually use search for Rapid Response?

HOW TO USE SEARCH FOR NEWS RAPID RESPONSE

Dedicated News Hounds - Of course political campaigns have a war room, but for a variety of reasons I wasn't tapped into it. I kept Fox News, CNN, and CNBC running in the background of my office so I was very likely to catch breaking stories. You also of course can use Google Trends multiple times per day.

Google Trends Is Your Best Friend - Even if you get a story elsewhere, Google Trends is helpful because it quantifies how hot a story is and helps get you started with keyword development.

Website Access - The person building the campaign must either have an in-depth knowledge of your website to know where to point the traffic to or access to someone who can build landing pages on the fly.

Autonomy - The person or group building the search campaign needs autonomy to build it on the fly. Sure you might have some legal approvals, but the way to lose out on the traffic is to get bogged down in an approval process. Don't lose your traffic with a slow approval process.

Budget - Some times we were given new budget other times we just used the extra spend available from a very high ROI on search. This search activity comes and goes and you need money quickly to run a campaign. Also, keep in mind that some times this search activity is brand new and you might have to suck up a high search bid as Google learns more about the activity,

I had completely different posts in mind for tonight, but I can't hold my my tongue (really my fingers) any more. Why? I am completely sick of receiving 1980s styled political marketing communications from GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan. This isn't the first time I wrote about this campaign's lack of progressive (progressive as in new and not liberal) marketing techniques. However after weeks of receiving the same really wretched direct mail campaigns begging for dollars, tonight was the last straw for me. Stuffed in my mailbox was a newspaper styled flier with a real cheesy bumper sticker and a return envelope to give a donation. Not only does this insult political marketing post the 2008 election but it deprived the US Post Office from postal processing fees.

So of course I decided to take a poke around the internet to see what I can find on the candidates. Now I'm a busy man, so I didn't research all of the like dozen candidates to beat a vulnerable and weak Jon Corzine because well if I can't find the big three advertising online I'm not that worried about the rest. So here's what I found...

Paid Search Marketing - Nothing. Not a thing. None of the three are advertising online for people that are looking for information. This is like shooting fish in a barrel in NJ. There are tax issues, spending issues, economy, environment, etc that a well thought out campaign could be running to get in front of voters. Seriously, this is a piece of cake. It will raise donations, get people to join the campaign, and help voters understand where these candidates stand on issues. Remember, we won AAPC's best use of new technology award for search makreting so I kind of know what I'm talking about.

Social Networking - I joined Christie's as well as Lonegan's Facebook pages. Corzine I did not join but a quick browse of that page shows almost 9.900 supporters and a lot of information; it has also been updated on a regular basis. Lonegan has 974 supporters but since joining I've yet to receive any emails/messages via this group. It also seems that Lonegan is using a ghost writer /ghost Twitterer to make posts. Chris Christie has almost 3,400 fans and it appears his brother makes semi-authentic messages and posts (I wrote semi because I don't know if he really writes them, but it sure looks like that).

YouTube - Christie loaded up a recent video 2 days ago and has 34 subscribers and his most viewed video has about 1,244. I couldn't find an official Lonegan YouTube page and gave up looking for it (there were no links from his website). BTW - same thing for Corzine.

Twitter - The Lonegan campaign uses Twitter and has 720 followers but the Tweets I saw look nothing more than press clippings. Christie has 734 followers and Tweets in the same fashion as Lonegan. Corzine has an account with 140 followers but no Tweets. Clearly somebody just grabbed the Twitter account just in case they figure out the internet before the fall.

Website - Corzine websites is barely above brochureware with no links to any social networking options. He does have one thing going for him which is a picture with Obama. Lonegan's site is an improvement over Corzine's but other than the top masthead it is in need of a face lift. The homepage scrolls forever with repetitive links all over the page and their use of colors in inconsistent. Sure the site has a lot of information but it is poorly organized. Quite frankly it needs a MASSIVE overhaul. Christie's website is beautifully designed and looks like a modern political website.

Based on what I can see, none of these three warrant a rating of A for their eCampaigning prowess. The best of the bunch is the Christie campaign even though they haven't employed paid search marketing and can do more in the YouTube and online grass roots organizing areas. Lonegan's campaign with its wasteful use of direct marketing really doesn't seem to get using the internet. Seriously instead of dropping bad direct mail, improve the website and use search marketing as well as YouTube.

Christie needs to make some small improvements (search and online organizing), but Lonegan needs a massive overhaul to even get in the game. Why? While Corzine is weak and well hated in NJ, he will have the greatest campaigner alive working the phones and campaigning for him in the fall; more importantly President Obama will be campaigning for Corzine in the more populated areas of Camden County, Essex County, and Hudson County. That means Corzine has a BIG DAWG in this fight.

Yes, I know I'm a a week late on this post, but then again I'm not totally aimed at the Pharmaceutical Advertising market since my Dad died last June. Dad used to always talk with me about direct to consumer advertising especially when it came to internet advertising for these products. Yes I know my sweet spot is in politics, telecommunications, and finance marketing, but I always held a soft spot because of Dad's interest. That's why I found this article so interesting in Business Week.

In this week's Business Week they have an article called Pharma Flees The Net. (I couldn't find it online so that's why I didn't link to it.) Anyway, the article wrote that on April 3 (really April 2) the FDA sent a letter warning 14 of the world's biggest drug companies that their internet ads MUST INCLUDE WARNINGS about risks. Here's a link to all 2009 warnings and here's a link to one company's letter and a copy of the screen shots that the FDA included.

And what happened? Poof. For the most part internet advertising for big Pharma DISAPPEARED; that's right they are gone especially for black box warning products. I didn't check every search term, but for the dozen I looked for they were gone. Sure, display ads might be repurposed (at least the bigger banner units) to include warnings, if you can squeeze them in given a reasonable font size and ad specs, but a search ad or a 468x60 is dead without more guidance. (for a more detailed post see this article from ClickZ)

That's right folks. The tech President Obama via the FDA virtually eliminated an internet advertising mechanism for the Pharma industry. Of course this hurts Google and Yahoo, plus some of my brothers and sisters in the internet advertising world who relied on Pharma as an industry. I really wondered what Eric Schmidt thinks of this as an Obama adviser?

Writing of Eric, I also wonder how many agency veterans, digital consultants, search experts etc supported President Obama during the election and are now regretting that vote? Sure he wowed you with his marketing prowess, beautiful speeches, hope filled messages, and social networking expertise, but did you ever take a look into his policies? Did you ever think for a second how this would impact the way you earn a living?

Maybe you took your eye off the ball and were excited for your middle class tax cut. However, you could have just lost a big chunk of your income statement if you relied on big Pharma advertising dollars.

I saw plenty of internet advertising veterans line up behind Obama during the campaign season; I even got flamed by a few of them for harmless comments because passions ran high. However, with more regulation comes more change. You voted for change. How does that change look on your income statement now?

Since the end of the election I've
watched people argue over what happened to the Republicans and Senator
McCain. A lot of folks have jumped on the Republican don't get the
internet mantra and I've always known that was never the answer. Some
people think it was Governor Palin and once again I never believed that.
I've always known we lost because of an extremely unpopular President, the
economy blowing up on 9/15, and running into the great Obama money making
machine. The blow up in the economy was a double whammy with President
Bush's unpopularity which continues to haunt Republicans because of out of
control spending, Government growth, and lack of fiscal discipline; all things
that go against Reagan's strategies for winning elections.

I attended quite a few AAPC panels and
not just the ones where my fellow Campaign Solutions friends were on. Two
in particular were quite fascinating for me and both were recaps of the 2008
courtesy of Whit Ayers, Charlie Cook, and Ron Brownstein. From that panel
I learned a lot of interesting points including (these are my notes and so the
exact number below might be incorrect, but directionally...):

Obama won 80% of the non-white vote and also won like 2/3 of the under 29 year old crowd; there will be 18 million more of them (Millennials) by 2012

Obama also won white, college educated while the only group that Senator McCain won was non-college educated whites

Aiming at the South has issues because of the Electoral College vote. The last non-narrow Republican win that included major Shore states was 1988.

Since 1992, 14 Shore states representing 69% of 270 Electoral votes have consistently voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate (*exception is NH 2000). That's basically starting down 190 votes to ZERO putting the pressure on OH, FL, and VA (increasingly going blue) for the GOP to compete. This means narrow Republican Presidential victories (see 2000 and 2004) when we win if we continue on this strategy; this also only means continuing to focus on the Republican base.

These
shore states are WA, OR, CA, ME, NH*, VT, MA, CT, RI, NY, PA, NJ, MD, and DE
and they haven't voted for a Republican in 20 years. Let that sink in for
a second. In 20 years almost 70% of the electoral college hasn't gone to
a Republican and that points to a branding and messaging problem in
attracting voters in these states. Simply stated, these states include
big businesses like media, agencies, pharma, banking, financial services,
internet, ivy league colleges - well you get the idea: targets that the current
Republican message falls short. BTW - would it surprise you that these states are also where the MONEY comes from?

What does this all tell me? If a brand was EVER in need of a rebranding it
would be the Republican Party and here's where I'd start if this was my product.

I'd start with a hypothesis that Reagan's core messages of a strong economy, job growth, military strength, and smaller government are still valuable. Other issues while still important would be pushed to the background (see Obama note below).

Focus groups and quantitative studies to firm up strategies and tactics. I'd run these on a monthly basis to watch changes.

I'd look for candidates that can pull in Shore states. That probably means pushing issues that play in the South to the background. Basically, an Obama messaging strategy of being a liberal in disguise as a centrist. Behind the scenes work your agenda, but on the surface focus on core issues, #1 above.

Engage youth and Latino markets because that's where the new voters are.

Stop competing with President Obama on small issues and focus on jobs and economy (tea parties are a great start). 2010 is our key election which puts September 2010 as ground zero. Obama has offered up a lot of information and I'd track that job forecast and GDP forecast and hammer away. Eventually even with non-job creating expenditures and pork, the economy will turn around but everything I read says that real growth won't be until 2010.

Think Twitter sound bites and explanations (I know this post is long). If you can't explain why Obama's military budget is wrong, don't give the liberal press and comedians their own sound bite of why Republicans say he cut the budget when the bottom line # went up 4% or so.

Ronald Reagan is our brand essence and not a major message. It is time to stop putting President Reagan in TV ads, debates, and political talking points. It is time to stop looking for the next Ronald Reagan. Today's new voters don't care and the ones in between them and 40 year old voters like me, were not voting when Reagan was a political force (Governor to President). Continuing to mention him in messaging is like Major League Baseball talking about their heritage.

Finally, the internet isn't just a fund raising ATM. It is a way to reach voters in the Shore states cheaply and effectively organize and communicate. Stop dropping direct mail.

It is time to rebrand and plan for 2010. It is time to win some Shore States. It is time that the Republican brand become competitive in these states because that's where the voters are.

I read two very interesting posts today. The first one was called Everyone an Instapundit and the second one written by a person I have a lot of respect for Roger Simon, CEO of PajamasMedia was called Top Twitter Target. Both of them were very similar in that they tout Twitter as a political movement that the conservative political machine gets more than the liberal political machine. Roger Simon best summarizes this feeling with the following line "It is no accident that Twitter, an extremely non-elitist form,
would appeal to the right more than the left. In these times, as those
of us in Hollywood know above all, it is ironically the left that is
mired in elitism".

Twitter is many things, but it is not some great gift to rescue Republicans. It is also not something that the liberal world ignores or doesn't understand. Let's not get all giddy that Karl Rove has a lot of followers and uses it quite often and that we've successfully organized Tea Parties via Twitter. I watched Michael Patrick Leahy co-found #TCOT (top conservatives on Twitter) and it was a brilliant move. However, Twitter isn't a strategy, it is a tactic.

Let's debunk the theory that says conservatives get it but liberals don't. Google is in discussions to work a deal with Twitter. Google is run by Eric Schmidt. Eric Schmidt is an adviser to President Obama. Liberals get Twitter.

The liberal blogosphere has HuffingtonPost, DailyKos, MyDD and thousands of other sites hanging off these big three. That generates tons of comments where the action really is. As an extended member of McCain's campaign (digital strategy, online advertising, search marketing) I tracked how these folks organized and they do quite well with using more than 140 characters. They don't need Twitter in the same fashion as Republicans. Sure you can call the liberal blogosphere elitist, but the people involved don't care.

As much as conservatives and Republicans have tried, sites like Townhall, Michelle Malkin, Instapundit, and Redstate don't generate the same enthusiasm from everyday folks that are not focused 24/7 on politics. Those people (unfortunately) gravitate towards a site like HuffingtonPost. I'm not saying that's right, but look at this Alexa ranking. It isn't even close.

Twitter is a vehicle to deliver news and organize thought streams. Uninterested thought streams means no utility. I'm a huge fan of Eli Manning, but his Twitter stream with almost 9K followers is useless.

Twitter is an echo chamber of other thoughts, brand messages, and communications. When it grows up and starts to make money, it will most likely look like Facebook. Facebook is a place where content is generated and where real utility can be delivered. Twitter isn't Facebook.

The cloud imagery of Twitter is perfect. People Tweet and if you aren't tuned into them you miss them. Just like clouds float by in interesting shapes that you miss if you don't take the time to look up once in a while. Twitter gets people involved who are watching that minute and once those Tweets are missed, they are hard to find again.

Yes you can organize via Twitter. You can organize meetings and organize messages. It is a great utility, but to have a political movement you need to get everyday people involved. There are 200 million worldwide users of Facebook, where do you think everyday, non-politicos are located today?

Like mobile text messages, Twitter is not a branding tool. It is a tool of direct action. Sure Obama announced Biden via a text message but in the corporate marketing world, that was about as noteworthy event as a new price promotion from Vonage.

I'm a huge fan of Twitter, but without content it is SPAM. Without a Republican message that will deliver better ideas than the Obama administration Twitter won't rescue us in 2010 or 2012. Tea Parties work because they are a great idea and the message delivered any non-politico can relate to. Let's not sing about our political Twitter prowess, let's try and come up with messages that will win the non-Twitter masses.

This year's AAPC (American Association of Political Consultants) conference was an extraordinary event. Connell Donatelli and Campaign Solutions (basically Becki Donatelli's political companies) won a ton of Pollie Awards for our political and public affair marketing work. I'm pretty sure nobody has come close to winning abound the 40 awards we got this year. The one I'm most proud of is the award we won for best use of new technology for the search marketing work we did for Senator McCain.

You long time readers know my involvement in the campaign in the search marketing work, but in my zeal to promote the work I often didn't think I gave enough credit to some of my team members. It really was remarkable work that a small group of us did all of Senator McCain's work in addition to the RNC's. We spent millions of dollars for both McCain and the RNC and that was just in the last 10 weeks of the campaign - you folks out there in corporate America would be jealous of the marketing. Some of my favorite memories.....

Meeting with Rick Davis as part of the Straight Talk America PAC and listening to early Presidential conversations and political tactics; none of those meetings would have occurred if it wasn't for Becki Donatelli. I also wouldn't have had the drive or the experience if Becki didn't share her knowledge with me.

Ryan Waite and Jason Johnson were the creative geniuses behind some of our best banner ads and creatives that we ran. Most specifically, the hippie Hillary ad that superimposed Hillary's head on a hippie body. That ad as I remember had click rates north of 2%. The other famous ad we ran was One Man Video which was a flash ad with 5 seconds of Senator McCain leaving as a POW; the great thing about that ad was that it included video inside standard flash size limits.

Jackie Huelbig whom I've known for many years was our ace reporting genius who probably had the toughest job around - she had to put up with relentless requests from me and Becki when we had to know yesterday what the results of our search campaign were and how much money we brought in the hour before. Jackie was also the one that helped me clean up a lot of the ads and loaded up the hundreds of video and display ads into Google AdSense.

And finally, of course the campaign that pretty much gave me free reign to do what we needed to do; I can only remember one ad that was rejected and that's because I thought it was controversial enough during the Michigan Primary that I wanted a check.

This video that Ryan produced for our AAPC award is a great summary of the importance of our search campaign. It features Peter Greenberger from Google, Rick Davis McCain's Campaign Manager. Friend and former RNC eCampaign director Cyrus Krohn. Give it a watch - it shows how a well run search marketing campaign can handle rapid response, email and donation generating tactics, all while bringing much needed branding and traffic to issue pages. It really was an awesome experience.

OK - we're nearing the end and President Obama just doesn't get that there are almost 40% of Americans against his spending plan. Why? Well perhaps that like 60% of the spending doesn't kick in until year 2 (from Fox News this morning). Maybe it's because there are billions upon billions of pure pork in the spending bill that won't help our economy (remember when we grilled US Automakers over a few billions). Obama says the time for talk is over and it is time for action. Republicans are nitpicking the bill. That Republicans want to use the failed policies of the past 8 years (completely untrue). President Bush didn't push for a cut in payroll taxes. A cut in payroll tax will allow you to keep more money in your check and allow Corporations to hire more - so says NJ CEO Steve Forbes.

President Obama hasn't made the switch from a talented campaigner to a talented governing President. Watch this video from the AP. Does this look like someone who is trying to work with Republicans? Does it look like someone who is bringing Change or someone who is relying on the Same partisan politics of the past?

I keep reading about how Obama's honeymoon is over or about how long until the press digs into President Obama. I say who cares about main stream media.

I think a smart person like Justin Germany (@justingermany) should create a video series in YouTube called "Obama's YouTube Problem" that compares Obama's campaign promises (words) with his current deeds (his actions). It will be an eyeopener and with enough material will be damaging to his administration and re-election efforts. Several examples are already available within the first 30 days..

First it started with the bad vetting process Team Obama did on several of the cabinet nominees (see Daschle and Richardson). Of course President Obama says that their vetting process is fine, but either it is broken or they are arrogant to think that tax cheats and former Governors under ethics investigations can pass a Senate confirmation. So much for bringing change to Washington.

Next up it was his campaign promise to keep lobbyists away from his administration. Of course they make exceptions when it is convenient, but that wasn't his campaign promise. He didn't promise to hire the least amount in the history of politics, he promised to keep them away. So like he did on taking matching campaign funds, he breaks his word.

Finally, this whole Obama Spending Plan is turning into an absolute nightmare for President Obama and unfortunately the rest of us. This is a pork infested plan that wastes billions of dollars on such crappy projects like:

$1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

$850 million for Amtrak.

$6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.

$650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

Remember when we dragged the auto industry executives to grill them over billions in loans they wanted? Well now, President Obama says that we are wasting precious time on haggling over what amounts to 1% of the bill (really closer to 2% but what's a few billions). It wasn't good enough for Obama to have a supply-side versus demand-side economic argument (spending versus tax cuts) but he had to get in bed with the Liberals in the House who shut out Republicans ruining his bipartisan campaign promise.

In the Senate where the Liberals don't have a majority he starts to get nasty and irrational, threatening Republicans and using scare tactics. Today Obama basically said "The time for talk is over and the time for action is now" and then sent his surrogate Claire McCaskill to proclaim "If we do nothing we will lose millions of jobs".

President Obama has no idea what the economy will do and doesn't want debate on the bill. This is how we ended up with TARP which President Obama voted for without much debate because it was something we had to do and do quickly. So, diplomacy is good with the Iranians but a few days of diplomacy with Republicans members of the Senate is a waste?

It is time to fight back and that's just a start. Obama's Achilles heel is the Change promises he made that unfortunately for him, he needs to rely on the non-change agents currently sitting in Congress to deliver on them. There will not be the right Change in Washington and we might as well start building the proof now.

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